Vol. 09 · Loanwords ·French ·1560s
Bourgeois
from bourgeois
- Meaning
- Of the middle class; conventionally respectable, materialistic.
- Source word
- bourgeois
- Route into English
- Old French *burgeis* (townsman, from *burg*, fortified town) → French *bourgeois* → English. The class meaning was fixed by 19th-century French political writers and spread through Marxist theory.
- Arrived
- 1560s
From French
Beyond the Norman conquest's Old French foundation, English kept borrowing from French for art, cuisine, fashion, and diplomacy throughout the modern period.
English borrows.
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