Also 8 burgeois. [F. bourgeois (OF. burgeis, whence BURGESS):—late L. burgensis, f. burg-us town, ad. WGer. burg: see BOROUGH and BOURG.]
A. sb. orig. A (French) citizen or freeman of a city or burgh, as distinguished from a peasant on the one hand, and a gentleman on the other; now often taken as the type of the mercantile or shop-keeping middle class of any country.
a. 1674. Clarendon, Hist. Reb., III. XII. 241. He liv’d in a jolly familiarity with the Bourgeois and their Wives.
1704. Addison, Italy (1733), 281. Body of the Burgeois.
1842. Louisa S. Costello, Pilgr. Auvergne, I. 149. We met several peasants and some bourgeoises from neighbouring villages.
1864. Kirk, Chas. Bold, I. viii. 385. The merchants and persons of independent means, to whom the name of bourgeois was exclusively given.
1883. Olive Logan, in Harper’s Mag., July, 265/2. Of a summer evening, when the German bourgeois and his family … is enjoying the delicious breeze form the river valley.
B. adj. or attrib.
1. Of or pertaining to the French middle classes; also in comb., as bourgeois-looking.
1564–5. Randolph, in G. Chalmers, Mary Q. Scots (1818), I. 123. She [Mary] saith…. I sent for you, to be merry, and to see how like a Bourgeois-wife, I live, with my little troop.
1867. Parkman, Jesuits in N. Amer., xiv. (1875), 175. She was born … of a good bourgeois family.
1871. Morley, Voltaire (1886), 331. Born to be the insipid gossip of a bourgeois circle.
2. Resembling the middle classes in appearance, way of thinking, etc.
1840. Thackeray, Paris Sk. Bk. (1872), 79. A regular burgeois physiognomy.
1871. Lowell, Study Wind., Word for Winter. A poet whose inspiration always has an undertone of bourgeois.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, iii. 80. He is thoroughly bourgeois, to use a modern phrase.
