Bourgeois in a Sentence: Meaning, Examples & Practice

To use bourgeois in a sentence, decide whether you need the adjective that describes middle-class taste or the noun that names a middle-class person: “They moved to a bourgeois suburb.” The word carries a faintly critical edge in most modern uses.

Bourgeois at a glance

• Bourgeois works as an adjective and as a noun, spelled the same way for both.
• The form does not change for number: one bourgeois person, two bourgeois people.
• The adjective almost always comes before the noun it describes.
• It collocates with society, values, taste, family and respectability.
• The commonest error is writing a bourgeoisie for a single middle-class person.

What does bourgeois mean?

Bourgeois is an adjective and a noun meaning of, belonging to, or typical of the middle class, especially when the speaker means comfortable, conventional and materialistic. The Cambridge entry for bourgeois records both the neutral social sense and the disapproving everyday sense, and the difference decides the whole tone of a sentence. In Marxist writing the word is a technical class label for the owners of capital, opposite to proletarian.

One limitation matters for learners. Bourgeois is not a precise social-science measurement in everyday use, and it usually carries disapproval, so a neutral report says middle-class instead. The word also describes groups, tastes and institutions far more often than it names an individual, which is why the noun sense sounds sharper than the adjective.

The word reached English from French, where it named a town dweller rather than a factory owner, and that urban sense still colours the way writers use it. A bourgeois street is a comfortable, respectable town street, and a bourgeois habit is the habit of someone settled enough to care about appearances. The industrial meaning arrived with later political writing, so the same adjective can point to a place, a class or a taste, and only the surrounding nouns tell a reader which one is meant.

How do you use bourgeois in a sentence?

Put bourgeois directly before the noun when you want the adjective, and let the article tell a reader when you want the noun. The five patterns below cover the adjective, the countable noun and the collective noun, and only the last needs a verb to agree with a plural sense.

The adjective outnumbers the noun heavily in modern writing, so a learner is usually safest with bourgeois before a noun. The register note is easy to miss: the adjective can be neutral in a history essay and mocking in a review, but the noun is nearly always a judgement.

Bourgeois in a sentence: examples across contexts

Bourgeois moves from sociology to satire without changing its spelling. The ten sentences below keep the same word while shifting its tone, and each one shows whether the writer is describing a class or passing judgement on taste.

Two of these sentences use the noun and eight use the adjective, which mirrors the real balance of the word in print.

Bourgeois vs conventional, philistine and materialistic

Bourgeois is used loosely for three related insults, and each one attacks something different. conventional means following custom, a philistine is indifferent to art and ideas, and materialistic means caring too much about possessions.

Verdict: choose bourgeois when class and comfort are the target, conventional for unthinking habit, philistine for indifference to culture, and materialistic when possessions are the whole complaint. A provincial outlook is narrow because of place, which is a fourth and different criticism.

Word forms and grammar of bourgeois

Bourgeois changes for neither number nor gender, which surprises learners who expect a plural. The table sets out the adjective, the two noun uses and the collective noun that is so often mistaken for the singular.

Keep the plural noun and the collective noun apart. The bourgeois are the people, while the bourgeoisie is the class they belong to, and a propertied class in Marxist writing is exactly what the term was built to name.

Common mistakes with bourgeois

• Incorrect: He is a bourgeoisie. Correct: He is bourgeois, or he is a member of the bourgeoisie. Rule: Bourgeoisie names the class, not one person; the individual is a bourgeois or bourgeois.
• Incorrect: The bourgeoisie values changed after the war. Correct: Bourgeois values changed after the war. Rule: Before a noun, English needs the adjective bourgeois, not the class noun.
• Incorrect: She bought a bourgeois at the market. Correct: She bought a rather bourgeois lamp at the market. Rule: As a countable noun the word means a person, so it cannot name an object.
• Incorrect: The bourgeois was a wealthy merchant. Correct: The bourgeois were wealthy merchants, or a bourgeois was a wealthy merchant. Rule: The collective noun takes a plural verb, while the singular takes a.
• Incorrect: They were very bourgeoisly dressed. Correct: They were dressed in a very bourgeois style. Rule: English has no settled adverb bourgeoisly; use a phrase instead.

Practice using bourgeois

Work through the seven items, then read the reasoning beside each answer rather than only the key.

1. Fill the gap: The novel describes a ______ family obsessed with appearances.
2. Choose the better word: The whole class of factory owners was known as the (bourgeois / bourgeoisie).
3. Correct the error: She was proud of her bourgeoisie upbringing.
4. Build a sentence: use the bourgeois about the merchants who controlled a nineteenth-century town.
5. Spot the register: which belongs in a sociology essay — the new middle class held bourgeois values, or those people are so bougie?
6. Rewrite as an adjective: The manners of the middle class struck him as stiff.
7. Choose the form: Two (bourgeois / bourgeoises) families shared the building.

Answers

1. bourgeois — the adjective sits before the noun family.
2. bourgeoisie — the collective noun names the whole class, while bourgeois would name individuals.
3. She was proud of her bourgeois upbringing — upbringing needs the adjective, not the class noun.
4. Model answer: The bourgeois controlled the town’s warehouses and its newspaper.
5. The new middle class held bourgeois values — it keeps the analytical register, unlike the slang bougie.
6. His manners struck him as bourgeois — the adjective works after the linking verb seemed or struck.
7. bourgeois — the spelling never changes for number.

The bottom line

Use bourgeois in a sentence for anything relating to the middle class, whether you mean it neutrally in a history essay or critically in a review of taste and comfort. The two nuances that decide most sentences are these: the form never changes for number, so two families stay two bourgeois families, and the noun is nearly always a judgement while the adjective can stay neutral. When you need a plain description, middle-class carries no sting.

Frequently asked questions about bourgeois

Is bourgeois the same as bourgeoisie?

They are related but not interchangeable. Bourgeois is the adjective and the word for one middle-class person, while bourgeoisie is the collective noun for the middle class as a whole. A bourgeois family belongs to the bourgeoisie, and the class owns property that the individuals may never touch.

How do you pronounce bourgeois?

Bourgeois keeps its French shape in English, so the final consonant is silent and the stress falls at the front. The usual British pronunciation ends in a soft -wah, and American speakers often stress the second syllable instead. The spelling never changes to match the sound, which is why the word looks harder than it is.

Is bourgeois an insult?

It depends on the speaker. In sociology and Marxist writing, bourgeois is a neutral class label for the owners of capital. In everyday and artistic use, it usually criticises comfort, convention and material ambition. Context, not the dictionary, decides whether a sentence is analysis or mockery, so watch the surrounding adjectives.

Is bourgeois singular or plural?

The form stays the same for both numbers: a bourgeois refers to one middle-class person, and the bourgeois refers to the group. The adjective is also invariable, so one bourgeois family and two bourgeois families use identical spelling. Only the article and the verb reveal whether the noun is singular or plural.