bougie
/ˈbuːʒi/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 2.33 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A tapered cylindrical instrument for introducing an object into a tubular anatomical structure, or to dilate such a structure, as with an esophageal bougie.
adj
Behaving like or pertaining to people of a higher social status, middle-class / bourgeois people (sometimes carrying connotations of fakeness, elitism, or snobbery).
Derogatory; Slang
adj
Fancy or good-looking, without connotations of snobbery or pretentiousness.
Canadian usage; British usage; Slang
Example Sentences
- ""There, as my lord, with achromatic glass, / "O'erlooks St. James's Park, and on the grass, / "Beneath his mansion's half-closed window spies / "Two crouching urchins' gross obscenities, / "He turns his eager gaze, adjusts the screw, / "And brings their unwashed nudities in view. / "That spot, concealed by two o'er hanging hills, / "Foul sweat and fœtid excrement distils, / "Yet frowsy, there the pipe-clayed soldier sports, / "And bishops hold episcopalian courts. / "'Tis there the Bath empiric's finger guides, / "The oiled bougie ; and as the dildo slides / "Besmeared, to meet last night's descending meal, / "Oft makes the strictures he pretends to heal."
- "2001, Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Alfred A. Knopf (2001), 12, I was not too sure, as a child, what doctors "did," and glimpses of catheters and bougies in their kidney dishes, retractors and speculums, rubber gloves, catgut thread, and forecepts - all this, I think, rather frightened me, though it fascinated me too."
- "Hey, look, man, I haven't changed, I'm not gonna change and I'm not down with this bougie stuff."
- "Called “bougie” when she was growing up, even though she’d never considered herself close to that, Ewing has turned the word around, using it as the title of a fictitious magazine she has dreamed up."
- "I'll be on the movie screens / Magazines and bougie scenes"
- "Shangela is kind of bougie, but she's also your homegirl."
Etymology
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
- Root: bougie, *bʰerǵʰ-, -
Usage
- Derogatory
- Slang
- Canadian usage
- British usage
- Countable
- Uncountable