January 15, 2025 • 10 mins
Bourgeoisie is more than a word. It means something different depending on when and where it's being used.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's chalk and Jerry's sitting in for Dave. So it's
short stuff. You basic person.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
You calling me bougie?
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yeah, no not. I wouldn't do that. I think it's
kind of a mean thing to say to somebody, at
least in America. In France, they're like, yes, you're right,
thank you. In America, it's a bit of a put down.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
That's right. And that's what we're talking about today, where
you're talking about a word bourgeois. B oh you r
G E O I s. Yeah, not to be confused
with bourgeoisie.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Correct, Well, yeah, they're very closely related. Bourgeois can mean
a It can be an adjective and a noun. Right,
If it's a nown, you're talking about one person who
is bourgeois. So that's their behavior where it's the one
person bourgeoisie as all of the people who are bourgeois.
It's a noun only, okay, everybody. There's gonna be a
(01:07):
quiz at the end of this episode.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
But if you if you talk to Americans, a lot
of Americans probably hear bourgeois and they think, oh, fancy
fancy fancy, right, And that is not the case because
bourgeois refers to like you called me, basics or sort
of a middle class basic individual, yes, or group of individuals.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Right. But there's a there's a long road between the
original version of bourgeois that we'll talk about and then
the American version that it has now and right, smack
dab in the middle are the commis, specifically Karl Marx.
(01:47):
I don't understand why Joseph Engles never gets his due
because he and Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto. But it's
always just Karl Marx. Karl Marx, you know, must drive
angles crazy. But in eighteen forty eight they published the
Communist Manifesto, and in that they adopted the word that
had formerly been middle class people. It wasn't really much
(02:09):
of a put down, it wasn't. It was just a
useful word for a while. He equated them with the
people who owned the capital that the labor was produced on,
and decided that they were exploiting the proletariat, the working class. Right,
that's right.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And he was writing in German, so of course he
did not say bourgeois. He said bergiar lche Gesellschaft and English.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Make sureman sound beautiful, Chuck, thank.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
You, Donka.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
In America they may translate that as sybil society or
maybe a bourgeois society. But either way you slice it,
what he's saying is the bourgeoisie are are the bad people.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
They're the one they're exploitive, They're not actually doing anything.
They just own the stuff that the people are actually
doing something or using to do the thing that they're doing.
But really the bourgeoisie are the ones who are making
the money off the working class in their labor right.
So it was not it was not at this at
this time, it was not viewed as a very popular
(03:13):
or it wasn't it wasn't praise. How about that no
one ever used it for praise by this time and
when it finally crossed the Atlantic to America around the
early twentieth century, the wobbles the industrial workers of the
world who were I believe we talked about them before,
and they were split between communists and anarchists, and there
(03:35):
was a big struggle I think between the two. But
regardless of whether you're a communist or an anarchists, at
the beginning of the twentieth century. You were not a
fan of the bourgeoisie. And yeah, so the Wobbleys did
not like the bourgeoisie either, and then in fact came
up with a new slang term for him.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
That's right. The slang word was boushois bushwa. And what's weird?
I think that was an a quote from a nineteen
seventy article. What's weird, though, is that that word boushwa
eventually was sort of morphed into a slang for bs,
(04:13):
like somebody's full of hot air, or bs someone you
know is full of bushwi.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Right, we have to thank our friends at the Grammarphobia
blog for digging that stuff up.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
And then so it also kind of morphed in a
new way, kind of the way that we view it today.
But a little yeah, I guess it was pretty much
the way we view it today. It first pops up
in black culture, where it kind of morphed thanks to
Gladys Knight and the Pips. They had a disco hit
(04:45):
in nineteen eighty called Bougie Bougie.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
And can we hear a snippet?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
No, we can't, unfortunately, but if you want to hear
any of the song Boogie Bougie. You can find it
on YouTube or just about anywhere where you can listen
to it free and clear. But it's a great song
and I strongly recommend people go listen to it.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, and that would be be o u r g
I E comma b o u r g i.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
E right, and the whole the whole point of the
song is it's about somebody who comes from the working
class or a poorer background but started to make money
and now they're flaunting it. They have like a new
car with the sun roof, they have new clothes, and
it was a it was a commentary on them, but
also kind of like a snide one too, like like
(05:30):
these these people are being tacky in a way and
forgetting who they are where they come from.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
I guess yeah, it's kind of like that that new
money old money thing, which is just so.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
You know, yeah, I say we take a break, chuck.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yes, I was.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
About to say that nice.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Softly, jaw.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Soft.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
So if you want to go back to the original bougie,
if you want to go back to France. The original
meaning is from a French word b o u r g,
which I guess would that be Bourg.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah, kind of like berg on the end of a town.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Okay, and that's like a small town or a small
market in the Middle Ages. The people that live there
sort of adopted that name for themselves, so it kind
of this this word is just morphing and morphing all
over the place over the years. They were one step
up from like a farming peasant, so they were sort
of the middle class of the.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Time, right, which is just the way that it was.
Again I said, it was like a useful word. It
wasn't like a put down. It wasn't like a compliment.
It was like you are bourgeois. That's that's that descriptor right,
very nice. And it wasn't until the seventeenth century, specifically,
I think in sixteen seventy when Moliere, the French playwright,
(07:08):
came up with a musical comedy he was hilarious called
Le Bourgeois gentle Gentleumes or the bourgeois Gentleman. And this
is when it takes bourgeois and makes fun of it.
It's Moliere was punching down to the middle class and
essentially doing the exact same thing that Gladys Knight and
(07:31):
the Pips are doing with bougie bougie they he was
basically making fun of some middle class social climber who
was trying to make a name for himself in French society.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
That's right, and that would be the definition that is
most sort of thought of today in the twenty first
century when someone says bougie. Another modern musical example is
Atlanta's own from the atl Migos. You ever listen to Migos, Oh, yeah,
it's good stuff. They have a song called bad and
Bougie in this case spelled b o u j e,
(08:06):
and it sort of leans back on that what the
Pips we're talking about? Sort of a new fancy lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yes, but two things were different. One the Migos made
their money cooking crack in a crock pot, which is
a proprietary eponym, and usually there was a oozy in
the same room too. And two they were proud of
being bougie and all the new money and tacky like
ways that they threw it around like that was the thing.
(08:33):
It wasn't. It wasn't a put down. They were like, yeah,
I'm bougie. You should have seen the money I had before,
and now look what I got.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
It is a great song. Yeah, okay, so that's where
we are today. Bougie it's it's essentially a put down,
depending on whether you've claimed it yourself. If most of
the time, if you're calling someone bougie in America, you're
basically saying, like you said at the outset, they're basic,
They're They're lifestyle in their life is just kind of
(09:02):
boring and pedestrian, the middle of the road and what's
the point kind of thing. Usually it's from somebody who well,
they're just being mean essentially, right, Yeah, but in France
it's not the case.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, in modern France, it does not mean pedestrian. It's
a little more like good, well mannered, well educated. There's
there's like three levels supposedly of a Parisian bourgeois, the
nobility or people that are kind of close to nobility,
or the rich or the crime de la creme. You
(09:37):
have the bourgeois de provence, doctors, attorneys, middle class types,
and then the petite bourgeois who are you know, shopkeepers, artists,
you know, kind of self starting, self employed people.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, and even though there seems to be a bit
of a hierarchy, to it. They all are. They're behaving
the same way. I think it just depends on how
much money you have, is what it's really kind of
carved out between. But the bourgeois in France is exactly
what Americans who don't know what bourgeois means think of.
(10:13):
They're correct, but they're just thinking specifically of the French bourgeois.
Yeah and yeah, I guess that's about it for being
bougie and bourgeois and bourgeoisie and Karl Marx and Joseph
Engels and Migo's and Gladys Knight and the whole lot
of it.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Chuck, Well, we'll follow up in ten years and see
if the definition's changed again.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Great idea. In the meantime, Short Stuff is out. Stuff
You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hello, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's chalk and Jerry's sitting in for Dave. So it's
short stuff. You basic person.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
You calling me bougie?
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yeah, no not. I wouldn't do that. I think it's
kind of a mean thing to say to somebody, at
least in America. In France, they're like, yes, you're right,
thank you. In America, it's a bit of a put down.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
That's right. And that's what we're talking about today, where
you're talking about a word bourgeois. B oh you r
G E O I s. Yeah, not to be confused
with bourgeoisie.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Correct, Well, yeah, they're very closely related. Bourgeois can mean
a It can be an adjective and a noun. Right,
If it's a nown, you're talking about one person who
is bourgeois. So that's their behavior where it's the one
person bourgeoisie as all of the people who are bourgeois.
It's a noun only, okay, everybody. There's gonna be a
(01:07):
quiz at the end of this episode.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
But if you if you talk to Americans, a lot
of Americans probably hear bourgeois and they think, oh, fancy
fancy fancy, right, And that is not the case because
bourgeois refers to like you called me, basics or sort
of a middle class basic individual, yes, or group of individuals.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Right. But there's a there's a long road between the
original version of bourgeois that we'll talk about and then
the American version that it has now and right, smack
dab in the middle are the commis, specifically Karl Marx.
(01:47):
I don't understand why Joseph Engles never gets his due
because he and Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto. But it's
always just Karl Marx. Karl Marx, you know, must drive
angles crazy. But in eighteen forty eight they published the
Communist Manifesto, and in that they adopted the word that
had formerly been middle class people. It wasn't really much
(02:09):
of a put down, it wasn't. It was just a
useful word for a while. He equated them with the
people who owned the capital that the labor was produced on,
and decided that they were exploiting the proletariat, the working class. Right,
that's right.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And he was writing in German, so of course he
did not say bourgeois. He said bergiar lche Gesellschaft and English.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Make sureman sound beautiful, Chuck, thank.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
You, Donka.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
In America they may translate that as sybil society or
maybe a bourgeois society. But either way you slice it,
what he's saying is the bourgeoisie are are the bad people.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
They're the one they're exploitive, They're not actually doing anything.
They just own the stuff that the people are actually
doing something or using to do the thing that they're doing.
But really the bourgeoisie are the ones who are making
the money off the working class in their labor right.
So it was not it was not at this at
this time, it was not viewed as a very popular
(03:13):
or it wasn't it wasn't praise. How about that no
one ever used it for praise by this time and
when it finally crossed the Atlantic to America around the
early twentieth century, the wobbles the industrial workers of the
world who were I believe we talked about them before,
and they were split between communists and anarchists, and there
(03:35):
was a big struggle I think between the two. But
regardless of whether you're a communist or an anarchists, at
the beginning of the twentieth century. You were not a
fan of the bourgeoisie. And yeah, so the Wobbleys did
not like the bourgeoisie either, and then in fact came
up with a new slang term for him.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
That's right. The slang word was boushois bushwa. And what's weird?
I think that was an a quote from a nineteen
seventy article. What's weird, though, is that that word boushwa
eventually was sort of morphed into a slang for bs,
(04:13):
like somebody's full of hot air, or bs someone you
know is full of bushwi.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Right, we have to thank our friends at the Grammarphobia
blog for digging that stuff up.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
And then so it also kind of morphed in a
new way, kind of the way that we view it today.
But a little yeah, I guess it was pretty much
the way we view it today. It first pops up
in black culture, where it kind of morphed thanks to
Gladys Knight and the Pips. They had a disco hit
(04:45):
in nineteen eighty called Bougie Bougie.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
And can we hear a snippet?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
No, we can't, unfortunately, but if you want to hear
any of the song Boogie Bougie. You can find it
on YouTube or just about anywhere where you can listen
to it free and clear. But it's a great song
and I strongly recommend people go listen to it.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, and that would be be o u r g
I E comma b o u r g i.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
E right, and the whole the whole point of the
song is it's about somebody who comes from the working
class or a poorer background but started to make money
and now they're flaunting it. They have like a new
car with the sun roof, they have new clothes, and
it was a it was a commentary on them, but
also kind of like a snide one too, like like
(05:30):
these these people are being tacky in a way and
forgetting who they are where they come from.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
I guess yeah, it's kind of like that that new
money old money thing, which is just so.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
You know, yeah, I say we take a break, chuck.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yes, I was.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
About to say that nice.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Softly, jaw.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Soft.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
So if you want to go back to the original bougie,
if you want to go back to France. The original
meaning is from a French word b o u r g,
which I guess would that be Bourg.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah, kind of like berg on the end of a town.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Okay, and that's like a small town or a small
market in the Middle Ages. The people that live there
sort of adopted that name for themselves, so it kind
of this this word is just morphing and morphing all
over the place over the years. They were one step
up from like a farming peasant, so they were sort
of the middle class of the.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Time, right, which is just the way that it was.
Again I said, it was like a useful word. It
wasn't like a put down. It wasn't like a compliment.
It was like you are bourgeois. That's that's that descriptor right,
very nice. And it wasn't until the seventeenth century, specifically,
I think in sixteen seventy when Moliere, the French playwright,
(07:08):
came up with a musical comedy he was hilarious called
Le Bourgeois gentle Gentleumes or the bourgeois Gentleman. And this
is when it takes bourgeois and makes fun of it.
It's Moliere was punching down to the middle class and
essentially doing the exact same thing that Gladys Knight and
(07:31):
the Pips are doing with bougie bougie they he was
basically making fun of some middle class social climber who
was trying to make a name for himself in French society.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
That's right, and that would be the definition that is
most sort of thought of today in the twenty first
century when someone says bougie. Another modern musical example is
Atlanta's own from the atl Migos. You ever listen to Migos, Oh, yeah,
it's good stuff. They have a song called bad and
Bougie in this case spelled b o u j e,
(08:06):
and it sort of leans back on that what the
Pips we're talking about? Sort of a new fancy lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yes, but two things were different. One the Migos made
their money cooking crack in a crock pot, which is
a proprietary eponym, and usually there was a oozy in
the same room too. And two they were proud of
being bougie and all the new money and tacky like
ways that they threw it around like that was the thing.
(08:33):
It wasn't. It wasn't a put down. They were like, yeah,
I'm bougie. You should have seen the money I had before,
and now look what I got.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
It is a great song. Yeah, okay, so that's where
we are today. Bougie it's it's essentially a put down,
depending on whether you've claimed it yourself. If most of
the time, if you're calling someone bougie in America, you're
basically saying, like you said at the outset, they're basic,
They're They're lifestyle in their life is just kind of
(09:02):
boring and pedestrian, the middle of the road and what's
the point kind of thing. Usually it's from somebody who well,
they're just being mean essentially, right, Yeah, but in France
it's not the case.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, in modern France, it does not mean pedestrian. It's
a little more like good, well mannered, well educated. There's
there's like three levels supposedly of a Parisian bourgeois, the
nobility or people that are kind of close to nobility,
or the rich or the crime de la creme. You
(09:37):
have the bourgeois de provence, doctors, attorneys, middle class types,
and then the petite bourgeois who are you know, shopkeepers, artists,
you know, kind of self starting, self employed people.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, and even though there seems to be a bit
of a hierarchy, to it. They all are. They're behaving
the same way. I think it just depends on how
much money you have, is what it's really kind of
carved out between. But the bourgeois in France is exactly
what Americans who don't know what bourgeois means think of.
(10:13):
They're correct, but they're just thinking specifically of the French bourgeois.
Yeah and yeah, I guess that's about it for being
bougie and bourgeois and bourgeoisie and Karl Marx and Joseph
Engels and Migo's and Gladys Knight and the whole lot
of it.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Chuck, Well, we'll follow up in ten years and see
if the definition's changed again.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Great idea. In the meantime, Short Stuff is out. Stuff
You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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