petty bourgeois
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of petty bourgeois
First recorded in 1885–90
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.
“What they had hoped for themselves and their petty bourgeois dreams — they’re not that different from ours at all,” he says.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 11, 2024
But its central insight was sound: that the future lay with coalitions of different estates, petty bourgeois and peasantry and proletariat mixed up, not with a Commune committed to one.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 15, 2014
I said, this other stuff, this metaphysical stuff, was petty bourgeois self-indulgence.
From Salon ● Apr. 6, 2014
Most disfiguring, however, was the chippy, petty bourgeois resentment.
From The Guardian ● May 28, 2012
“He says that you are a petty bourgeois degenerate,” I was told.
From "Black Boy" by Richard Wright
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.
