bougie
See also: Bougie
English
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
Borrowed from French bougie (“wax candle”), after the Algerian city Bougie, and the tapered, hand-dipped candles it made. The medical instruments were originally made from waxed linen.
Noun
bougie (plural bougies)
- (medicine) A tapered cylindrical instrument for introducing an object into a tubular anatomical structure, or to dilate such a structure, as with an esophageal bougie.
- 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.
- 2001, Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Alfred A. Knopf (2001), 12,
- A wax candle.
Etymology 2
From bourgeoisie.
Adjective
bougie (comparative bougier, superlative bougiest)
- (chiefly African-American Vernacular, slang, usually derogatory) Behaving like or pertaining to people of a higher social status, middle-class / bourgeois people (sometimes carrying connotations of fakeness, elitism, or snobbery).
- 1991, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Season 2, Episode 3, Will Gets a Job, airdate September 23, 1991:
- Hey, look, man, I haven't changed, I'm not gonna change and I'm not down with this bougie stuff.
- 2007, Satire pervades the series of fictional magazine covers , L. Kent Wolgamott, The Lincoln Journal Star, October 12, 2007, [1]:
- 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.
- 2007, "Glamorous" by Fergie:
- I'll be on the movie screens
- Magazines and bougie scenes
- I'm not clean, I'm not pristine
- I'm no queen, I'm no machine
- 2010, RuPaul's Drag Race, Season 2, Episode 1, Gone With the Window, airdate February 1, 2010:
- Shangela is kind of bougie, but she's also your homegirl.
- 2010, "Sleazy" by Ke$ha:
- I don't need you or your brand new Benz
- Or your bougie friends
- I don't need love lookin' like diamonds
- Lookin' like diamonds
- 1991, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Season 2, Episode 3, Will Gets a Job, airdate September 23, 1991:
- (British, slang) fancy or good-looking, without the same connotations of snobbery or pretentiousness as in sense 1.
Alternative forms
Synonyms
Derived terms
Related terms
French
Etymology
From Bougie, the French name for the Algerian town of Béjaïa, formerly known for exporting candles.
Pronunciation
Noun
bougie f (plural bougies)
Derived terms
Further reading
- “bougie”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Categories:
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- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/uʒi
- English terms borrowed from French
- English terms derived from French
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- en:Medicine
- English adjectives
- African-American Vernacular English
- English slang
- English derogatory terms
- British English
- English terms derived from toponyms
- en:Medical equipment
- French 2-syllable words
- French terms with IPA pronunciation
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- French lemmas
- French nouns
- French countable nouns
- French feminine nouns
- French terms derived from toponyms