bougie

What it means

Bougie describes something expensive-feeling and a little pleased with itself — a restaurant, a neighbourhood, a bottle of water. It sits on a line between compliment and dig, and the tone decides which: calling your own weekend bougie is a boast, calling someone else bougie usually is not.

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Examples

• Fifteen dollars for a coffee? That's bougie.
• We went somewhere bougie for her birthday.
• He's gotten so bougie since the promotion.
• It's a bougie little place but the food is genuinely good.

Where it comes from

Shortened from "bourgeois", the French word for the middle class, by way of Black American English where "bourgie" has described class-climbing since at least the 1970s. The spelling "bougie" took over online.

Related slang