petit bourgeois
Americannoun
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petits bourgeois
plural
noun
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Also called: petite bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie. the section of the middle class with the lowest social status, generally composed of shopkeepers, lower clerical staff, etc
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a member of this stratum
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of petit bourgeois
Borrowed into English from French around 1855–60
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Her own origins were lower middle class, petit bourgeois: she had an uncle who was a doctor—the star of the family—but neither of her parents had gone to university.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 27, 2016
This is not to say that the way I thought of Calcutta was joyless; in fact, my sense of the commonplace aspects of its petit bourgeois life was fundamentally joyful.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 2, 2013
As a would-be expat, scornful of Pudding Island and its drab inhabitants, Larry liked nothing more than to épater un petit bourgeois.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 10, 2012
One page later she is deriding this caviar and Champagne celebration as “our petit bourgeois feast” and saying that “we wanted to live the living life,” whatever that is.
From New York Times ● Mar. 21, 2010
Fortunately the "petit bourgeois" gained his point, and the preservation of Belfort to France was the one drop of comfort in that sea of misery.
From Holidays in Eastern France by Matilda Betham-Edwards
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
