How to Use bourgeois in a Sentence

bourgeois

1 of 2 adjective
  • But her rebelling was to be even more bourgeois than our parents were.
    — Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker, 29 Sep. 2022
  • The bourgeois runway trend made an impact too, as did pant suits.
    — Brooke Bobb, Vogue, 21 Dec. 2019
  • What could these bourgeois housewives know about pleasing a man?
    — Gail Sheehy, Daily Intelligencer, 9 Sep. 2017
  • My boyfriend didn’t want to go in – too expensive, too bourgeois.
    — Margaret Wappler, Orange County Register, 27 July 2019
  • Some of it was wrapped up with the idea that eating out is a bourgeois indulgence.
    — New York Times, 19 May 2021
  • This was indeed something new under the bourgeois sun.
    — Literary Hub, 5 Nov. 2025
  • Xi doesn’t even play golf, which was banned for years in China as a bourgeois indulgence.
    — Bess Levin, The Hive, 5 Apr. 2017
  • Guilt over his bourgeois lifestyle, his out-of-touchness with the common people.
    — Vulture, 3 Sep. 2022
  • As a child of welfare, the luxuries of a bourgeois housewife meant zero to her.
    — Literary Hub, 6 Nov. 2025
  • The satire of bourgeois affluence can seem glib and overextended.
    — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 18 Feb. 2018
  • Red Guards took away his family’s piano, damning it as a bourgeois bauble.
    — Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 16 Nov. 2021
  • Yet the photographs are of this bourgeois woman who’s well-dressed and who’s sitting with her knitting.
    — Chris Klimek, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Feb. 2024
  • The Paper Palace has long since been sold (and reclad in bourgeois shingles).
    — Penelope Green, New York Times, 13 Aug. 2022
  • Unlike my mother, my grandmother had grown old the proper, bourgeois way.
    — Catherine Texier, Longreads, 24 Oct. 2019
  • Such a thing would of course be impossible for a married man living a respectable bourgeois life.
    — Christopher Beha, Harper's Magazine, 27 Apr. 2020
  • These people came from bourgeois families.
    — Alexandra Schwartz, New Yorker, 9 Feb. 2026
  • Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms.
    — Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 31 Jan. 2012
  • Beaton had an artist’s eye for detail, a designer’s eye for value and a bourgeois work ethic.
    — Dominic Green, WSJ, 1 Oct. 2021
  • There is in the play this sort of cri de coeur from Priestly that's condemning bourgeois greed and narcissism.
    — Adam Green, Vogue, 7 Sep. 2017
  • Green jacquards and gold velvet summoned bourgeois grandeur, while fractured florals hint at identity in pieces.
    — Lily Templeton, Footwear News, 3 Sep. 2019
  • As the turmoil grows, the stalwarts of Marina's bourgeois world cling to the hope that their old world will be restored.
    — Steve Donoghue, The Christian Science Monitor, 21 Dec. 2017
  • But the role of art is not to supply bourgeois comfort; a benefit of bourgeois comfort is the freedom to make art.
    — Literary Hub, 10 Dec. 2025
  • In this century, the suburbs became a site of bourgeois ambition.
    — Masha Gessen, The New Yorker, 1 Aug. 2022
  • Nicolas Sarkozy had Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the most bourgeois suburbs of Paris.
    — Jean-Marie Pottier, Slate Magazine, 9 May 2017
  • Think pencil skirts and silk blouses, bourgeois tailoring, and, of course, the famous Burberry trench.
    — Brooke Bobb, Vogue, 2 Oct. 2018
  • She was born into a comfortable bourgeois home in Chemnitz, Germany.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 4 Nov. 2021
  • Manet’s refusal to play along with the strictures of academic art matches his refusal to cater to France’s bourgeois fantasies.
    — Jackson Arn, The New Yorker, 11 Oct. 2023
  • In contrast to his better-off peers, who chafed against their starchy upbringing, Renoir was bourgeois by aspiration, not by birth.
    — Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 19 Aug. 2019
  • Both of his arms are in the sleeves, and his bourgeois father is kneeling on the floor, taking the shirt in order to conserve it, perhaps saving it from being soiled.
    — Theo Belci, Artforum, 27 Feb. 2026
  • What a pleasure, then, to come across a story in which maids occupy center stage from beginning to end and are as clever and capricious as any bourgeois heroine.
    — Chandrahas Choudhury, WSJ, 12 May 2017

bourgeois

2 of 2 noun
  • Here, the story is based in more skittish black bourgeois art-world elitism.
    — Armond White, National Review, 1 Sep. 2021
  • The second is, the way that the men behaved is part of bourgeois values.
    — Jesse Singal, Daily Intelligencer, 9 Sep. 2017
  • But the thrust of the essay was right about the importance of bourgeois values.
    — Mona Charen, National Review, 8 Sep. 2017
  • What about Flaubert’s mantra about living like a bourgeois in order to create wild art?
    — James Wood, The New Yorker, 24 Jan. 2022
  • Those three presidents had been raised in the ideals of bourgeois knightliness.
    — Lance Morrow, WSJ, 14 Dec. 2018
  • The decadence served at pricey bourgeois restaurants are withheld from the tongues of those who craft such pleasures.
    — refinery29.com, 31 May 2018
  • Le bourgeois gentilhomme Suite was a delight through and through.
    — Scott Cantrell, Dallas News, 20 Feb. 2021
  • Like pious Carmela in her haute bourgeois drag, art museums are married to the mob.
    — Rhonda Lieberman, The New Republic, 23 Sep. 2019
  • Members of the rich elite are referred to as fifis, the equivalent of bourgeois.
    — New York Times, 29 June 2018
  • Mann’s new style is modernism in a high-bourgeois mode, as byzantine in its layering as anything in Joyce.
    — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 17 Jan. 2022
  • San Ángel Inn is where the bourgeois bring their mom for Mother’s Day brunch.
    — Cnt Editors, CNT, 19 Sep. 2017
  • Call this bourgeois, but sensuality and beauty make life worth the trouble.
    — Brian T. Allen, National Review, 26 Feb. 2022
  • The world that comes into focus feels less cosily bourgeois than his reputation would suggest.
    — B.t. | Delft, The Economist, 16 Oct. 2019
  • Like his Vetements shows, this one had a dark, street edge, with a bourgeois lady nominally at the center.
    — Cathy Horyn, The Cut, 2 Oct. 2017
  • Bourgeois said Ely preyed on others and originally set bail at $1 million.
    — Grace Wong, chicagotribune.com, 13 May 2017
  • The portrait that emerges is more complicated than the common views of Franklin as either a smug bourgeois or a genial old man.
    — New York Times, 1 Sep. 2021
  • Gotz, the daughter of a prosperous bourgeois family, would be murdered at Auschwitz.
    — Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 15 Dec. 2023
  • The staff is also trying to find an approach to curation so exhibits aren't relevant only to a bourgeois elite.
    — Maya Dukmasova, Chicago Reader, 5 July 2017
  • Aline was a seamstress from the countryside and so seeing her breastfeed was less shocking to an uptight bourgeois audience.
    — Claire Moran, CNN, 20 Dec. 2022
  • Justin Jain plays the usurping bourgeois Lopakhin, who has purchased the house and its beautiful, fruitless orchard.
    — Helen Shaw, Vulture, 14 May 2022
  • Madame Simenon tortured young Georges, his father, and herself with her dreams of bourgeois elevation.
    — Vince Passaro, Harper's magazine, 22 July 2019
  • The family apartment was furnished with the antiques and historic paintings that his bourgeois business guests preferred.
    — New York Times, 20 Apr. 2022
  • In larger bourgeois homes with multiple rooms, the bedroom also served as the central family gathering place.
    — Nika Mavrody, The Atlantic, 19 May 2017
  • There were the now omnipresent ’80s-isms (voluminous trenches, graphic zigzags), and nods to the bourgeois.
    — Vanessa Friedman, New York Times, 8 Mar. 2016
  • The voyageurs, manageurs du lard, and bourgeois that MacKenzie worked with had already discovered and mapped much of the continent by then.
    — Porter Fox, Outside Online, 19 Apr. 2018
  • The designer was born in the Northern town of Voghera in 1932 to a well-off bourgeois family.
    — Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline, 19 Jan. 2026
  • That maxim—a sound mind in a sound body—is the sort of bourgeois faux-wisdom that fails to equip Aickman’s civil servants to deal with the supernatural.
    — Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic, 7 May 2018
  • Next a section of haute bourgeois florals in pleated silk and leather, sleeves skimming down almost to the floor, shoulders rounded in a permanent, slightly tense, little shrug.
    — Vanessa Friedman, New York Times, 6 Mar. 2023
  • The striking color is a specific scarlet chosen by Davis to replace the brand’s previous bourgeois burgundy.
    — Rory Satran, WSJ, 6 Feb. 2023
  • The subject is a classic example of a mid-19th-century bourgeois Parisienne; her glance is either a smile or a judgment.
    — James McAuley, Town & Country, 6 Aug. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bourgeois.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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