Bougie Origins

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Corey from Fort Worth.

Hi, Corey, welcome.

What can we do for you?

You know, I’ve been noticing the word bougie being used in pop culture frequently, and I’m familiar with the use of the word bourgeoisie as, like, Karl Marx would use it or as it was used in the late 1800s, early 1900s, as meaning upper class. But it seems to me that the word bougie means something more like trashy or maybe drunk. I’m wondering when that change happened and if you can talk more about that distinction.

Where do you see it used in that way?

I’ve seen it in music specifically and also in a couple of books.

Any particular books or any particular music?

I don’t remember the title specifically. One of the reasons I wanted to kind of pin down the music in the books is because bougie has long been used in the United States in a variety of different contexts by a variety of different people. But these days it’s very common, far more common among African-American English speakers than it is among other speakers.

Yeah, I’ve noticed that as well.

And you’re right, bougie, and it has a bunch of different spellings, but I think the one that I would use is B-O-U-G-I-E. Bougie is short for bourgeois, and bourgeois basically means characteristic of the middle class, especially in terms of material possessions or trying to be showy about who you are and what you have, that sort of thing. But bougie itself has kind of transformed a little bit, and it’s almost always derogatory.

Are you seeing bougie as derogatory?

Absolutely.

Okay. One of the slang dictionaries I checked, the Historical Dictionary of American Slang, has a really nice summary of what bougie means. It says offensively middle class, where you are taking on these trappings in such a way that you are denying who you really are and putting on airs, kind of pretending to be a higher class than you truly are. And you’ll find that again and again and again in the uses of bougie.

There’s an African-American linguist named Geneva Smitherman who has a couple books that include definitions of bougie. One of her books is Black Talk, and the other is Word from the Mother Language. And while the term isn’t exclusively Black English, I think her definitions are important here. She says that bougie is an elitist, uppity-acting African-American person, also elitist Black event or style, negative term for those who identify with European American culture and reject Blacks and Black culture.

So the summary of that, I would say, is bougie, if you are called bougie, a lot of times people are saying you’re acting like you’re not one of the people that you actually are. You’re acting like you’re not one of us. You’re pretending to be part of the white mainstream culture when you’re not really.

Interesting.

Yeah. I think that answers my question pretty well.

Thank you.

Okay. It fits with your experience of it. That’s pretty cool.

Thanks for calling, Corey. Really appreciate it.

Yeah. Thank you very much.

All right. Take care.

Thanks, Corey.

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