Meaning of bougie in English

bougie

adjective

US informal disapproving

/ˈbuː.ʒi/ uk

/ˈbuː.dʒi/

belonging to or typical of the middle class (= a social group between the very rich and the poor), especially in giving a lot of importance to money, education, and social class, or in liking and wanting expensive and unusual things:

People in the neighborhood have strong opinions about inauthentic bougie snobs.

It's one of those places where you pay a lot of money but don't get much. Too bougie for me!

More examplesFewer examples

Oat milk, soy milk, almond milk - bougie people like any "milk" that doesn't actually come from a cow.
Doing an unpaid internship is kind of bougie because it means, hey, I can afford to work for no money!
There was mostly a bougie crowd, but it still felt very community-oriented.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Class & class-consciousness in general

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bougie

noun [ C ]

/ˈbuː.ʒi/ uk

/ˈbuː.ʒi/

bougie noun [C] (PERSON)

US informal disapproving

someone who belongs to the middle class (= a social group between the very rich and the poor), especially someone who supports traditional customs and values, or gives a lot of importance to money, education, and social class, or likes and wants expensive and unusual things:

There's nothing bougies love more than dinner parties.

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You're such a bougie with your artisan bread and organic veggies.
As a black man with degrees from Princeton and Harvard who uses "summer" as a verb to explain what he does on Martha's Vineyard, he is used to being called a bougie.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Class & class-consciousness in general

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bougie noun [C] (INSTRUMENT)

medical specialized

a thin medical instrument that can bend, put into a part of the body in order to open it up, examine it, or treat it :

A 54-60-F Maloney bougie was passed into the stomach.

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Several attempts to force the endotracheal tube over a gum elastic bougie were unsuccessful.
For endoscopic bougie dilation of the stricture, a guide wire will be placed in the stomach.
Oesophageal dilation by the Savary-Gaillard bougie technique is an effective method for treating oesophageal stricture.
One patient sustained an oesophageal perforation during passage of the bougie.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Medical & surgical equipment

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(Definition of bougie from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of bougie

bougie

In recent years, spinning -- otherwise known as indoor cycling -- has become shorthand for a specific and rarefied sort of bougie frivolity.

From Slate Magazine

See here for some ramp recipes that will make you feel extra bougie.

From Huffington Post

Do not pass blindly an esophageal bougie, probang, or other instrument.

From Project Gutenberg

The tightness of the grasping of the bougie by the stricture on withdrawal, determines the limitation of sizes to be used.

From Project Gutenberg

This consists in the passage of a suitable instrument, a sound or bougie of proper size, two or three times a week.

From Project Gutenberg

But the world still waits for the great spirit that shall successfully grapple the bougie fraud.

From Project Gutenberg

A silk-woven esophagoscopic bougie or the metallic tracheal bougie may be used, with proper caution.

From Project Gutenberg

Its location may also be determined, as in man, by the use of the bulbous bougie or sound.

From Project Gutenberg

When the first symptoms are noticed, the actual stricture may be so slight as scarcely to be possible of diagnosis by the bougie.

From Project Gutenberg

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of bougie?