1 00:00:01,840 --> 00:00:07,640 Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff 2 00:00:07,720 --> 00:00:12,840 Speaker 1: Lauren Boglebaum here. The word bourgeois has gone through some 3 00:00:12,960 --> 00:00:17,880 Speaker 1: serious twists and tumbles in its time. Although Americans tend 4 00:00:17,880 --> 00:00:21,200 Speaker 1: to think of everything French as fancy and high class, 5 00:00:21,640 --> 00:00:25,079 Speaker 1: the French definition of bourgeois has ranged from everything from 6 00:00:25,239 --> 00:00:30,840 Speaker 1: decidedly basic to effortlessly stylish. Today, let's look at how 7 00:00:30,880 --> 00:00:34,840 Speaker 1: this term and various slang around it, like bougie, came 8 00:00:34,880 --> 00:00:39,920 Speaker 1: to be. The English language started borrowing bourgeois from the 9 00:00:39,960 --> 00:00:44,159 Speaker 1: French sometime in the fifteen hundreds. The French developed the 10 00:00:44,159 --> 00:00:48,239 Speaker 1: word earlier during medieval times, from the old French word bourg, 11 00:00:48,560 --> 00:00:52,400 Speaker 1: meaning a market town or settlement. It's from the same 12 00:00:52,479 --> 00:00:55,120 Speaker 1: route where we get the burg in city names like 13 00:00:55,240 --> 00:01:00,360 Speaker 1: Pittsburgh or the word burrow. Anyway, a bourgeois was a 14 00:01:00,440 --> 00:01:04,280 Speaker 1: person who lived in a town. The plural was bourgeoisie, 15 00:01:05,600 --> 00:01:09,720 Speaker 1: though technically anyone living in these blooming urban environments was 16 00:01:09,760 --> 00:01:15,320 Speaker 1: a bourgeois. The term was usually only applied to craftspeople, merchants, landowners, 17 00:01:15,319 --> 00:01:18,800 Speaker 1: and the like, people who were an economic step up 18 00:01:18,840 --> 00:01:22,679 Speaker 1: from farmers and other manual laborers, but a step down 19 00:01:22,760 --> 00:01:27,480 Speaker 1: from the noble aristocrats. The bourgeoisie were people who had 20 00:01:27,760 --> 00:01:33,119 Speaker 1: middle class status. The word bourgeois expanded to become not 21 00:01:33,200 --> 00:01:35,679 Speaker 1: just a noun for one of these folks, but also 22 00:01:35,840 --> 00:01:40,880 Speaker 1: an adjective describing someone with certain middle class traits or behaviors, 23 00:01:41,640 --> 00:01:46,600 Speaker 1: and not necessarily in a positive way. In the sixteen seventies, 24 00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:50,560 Speaker 1: the famous French playwright Moliere wrote a musical comedy called, 25 00:01:50,760 --> 00:01:55,120 Speaker 1: in translation, the Bourgeois Gentleman, which pokes fun at a 26 00:01:55,120 --> 00:01:59,440 Speaker 1: guy who's this naive middle class social climber who hires 27 00:01:59,480 --> 00:02:02,720 Speaker 1: tutors and fashion consultants to try to fit into high 28 00:02:02,720 --> 00:02:07,200 Speaker 1: class society. Bourgeois was not a term one would apply 29 00:02:07,400 --> 00:02:13,519 Speaker 1: to oneself. However, this loose middle class, also called the burghers, 30 00:02:14,040 --> 00:02:19,680 Speaker 1: became instrumental in the late seventeen hundreds during the French Revolution. Again, 31 00:02:19,840 --> 00:02:22,840 Speaker 1: they didn't self identify as a single group, but they 32 00:02:22,840 --> 00:02:26,079 Speaker 1: were the people with the means to form the revolutionary 33 00:02:26,120 --> 00:02:30,240 Speaker 1: political clubs and legislatures and even militaries. The toppled the 34 00:02:30,240 --> 00:02:34,840 Speaker 1: feudal system and the nobles at its head, and that's 35 00:02:34,880 --> 00:02:37,400 Speaker 1: how by the middle of the nineteen hundreds and the 36 00:02:37,440 --> 00:02:43,079 Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution, the term bourgeois shifted from sometimes snarky social 37 00:02:43,080 --> 00:02:47,720 Speaker 1: commentary to the center of a different political movement. In 38 00:02:47,760 --> 00:02:51,520 Speaker 1: eighteen forty eight, the German philosopher Karl Marx published the 39 00:02:51,560 --> 00:02:58,359 Speaker 1: Communist Manifesto, which laid out his economically revolutionary worldview. Marx 40 00:02:58,440 --> 00:03:03,160 Speaker 1: believed that capitalist industrial societies were engaged in a class war. 41 00:03:04,520 --> 00:03:08,000 Speaker 1: The heroes were the proletariat, the working class, while the 42 00:03:08,080 --> 00:03:12,000 Speaker 1: villains were the bourgeoisie, the higher class capitalists who owned 43 00:03:12,040 --> 00:03:16,040 Speaker 1: the means of production. The argument goes that the bourgeoisie 44 00:03:16,120 --> 00:03:19,160 Speaker 1: took ownership from the noble class, but then failed to 45 00:03:19,240 --> 00:03:24,040 Speaker 1: share it with the actual workers. To Marx, the bourgeoisie 46 00:03:24,080 --> 00:03:26,760 Speaker 1: had ripped off the proletariat by getting rich off of 47 00:03:26,800 --> 00:03:30,120 Speaker 1: their labor, and therefore the bourgeoisie had to be toppled, 48 00:03:30,520 --> 00:03:34,880 Speaker 1: like the nobles before them. Marxist ideas crossed the Atlantic 49 00:03:34,920 --> 00:03:38,240 Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds. There the plight of the 50 00:03:38,280 --> 00:03:41,760 Speaker 1: proletariat was picked up by an international labor union called 51 00:03:41,840 --> 00:03:45,560 Speaker 1: the Industrial Workers of the World or IWW, better known 52 00:03:45,600 --> 00:03:48,360 Speaker 1: as the Wobblies, which was founded in Chicago in nineteen 53 00:03:48,400 --> 00:03:52,400 Speaker 1: oh five. During the nineteen oughts, the Wobblis coined the 54 00:03:52,480 --> 00:04:01,120 Speaker 1: term bouchois spelled bushwa as slang for bourgeois. Historian Dorothy 55 00:04:01,160 --> 00:04:03,680 Speaker 1: Gage explained in her two thousand and nine book The 56 00:04:03,800 --> 00:04:08,000 Speaker 1: Dey Wall Street Exploded that the Wobbles quote bellowed out 57 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:13,280 Speaker 1: revolutionary songs, scorned the niceties of boucheois society, and made 58 00:04:13,320 --> 00:04:16,240 Speaker 1: a point of dressing in the workman's garb that eventually 59 00:04:16,279 --> 00:04:22,760 Speaker 1: became the Wobbly's trademark uniform. Members of the IWW mocked 60 00:04:22,839 --> 00:04:28,880 Speaker 1: what they saw as empty boucheois promises and conventions. What's more, 61 00:04:29,279 --> 00:04:33,880 Speaker 1: this dismissive connotation of boucheois pretty much immediately slipped into 62 00:04:33,920 --> 00:04:37,160 Speaker 1: the common lexicon as a sort of PG version of 63 00:04:37,200 --> 00:04:42,040 Speaker 1: the word bullsh excuse my French. The Random House Dictionary 64 00:04:42,040 --> 00:04:44,920 Speaker 1: of American Slang found the first such usage in a 65 00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:48,280 Speaker 1: nineteen oh six issue of the National Police Gazette, which 66 00:04:48,400 --> 00:04:52,400 Speaker 1: politely defined boucheois as a term of derision used to 67 00:04:52,480 --> 00:04:56,880 Speaker 1: convey the same comment as hot air. In this use, 68 00:04:57,040 --> 00:05:00,560 Speaker 1: the word boucheois showed up in detective novels and the like. 69 00:05:00,640 --> 00:05:06,799 Speaker 1: For decades, Black American culture started remixing bourgeois too, perhaps 70 00:05:06,839 --> 00:05:10,120 Speaker 1: influenced by this labor movement and by the Black Panther Party, 71 00:05:10,360 --> 00:05:14,400 Speaker 1: which also drew ideology from Marx. The R and B 72 00:05:14,520 --> 00:05:17,520 Speaker 1: group Gladys Knight and the Pips released their disco hit 73 00:05:17,800 --> 00:05:23,000 Speaker 1: Bougie Bougie in nineteen eighty spelled b o u r Gie. 74 00:05:23,960 --> 00:05:26,560 Speaker 1: The song was written and produced by the legendary husband 75 00:05:26,560 --> 00:05:30,520 Speaker 1: and wife team Ashford and Simpson. It describes a person 76 00:05:30,640 --> 00:05:34,440 Speaker 1: from across the tracks who flaunt their newly acquired money 77 00:05:34,480 --> 00:05:37,400 Speaker 1: with fancy clothes and a shiny car with a sun roof. 78 00:05:38,200 --> 00:05:40,400 Speaker 1: It is a bob if you're not familiar, look it up, 79 00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:44,680 Speaker 1: and it's also commentary about the pursuit of the trappings 80 00:05:44,880 --> 00:05:48,920 Speaker 1: of wealth through this type of use. As of the 81 00:05:48,960 --> 00:05:53,040 Speaker 1: early two thousands, the American English term bougie spelled without 82 00:05:53,080 --> 00:05:57,599 Speaker 1: the R of bougie, had flipped back to a definition 83 00:05:57,680 --> 00:06:02,600 Speaker 1: that Moliere might recognize. It's often used to playfully or 84 00:06:02,600 --> 00:06:06,600 Speaker 1: more derisively call out upwardly mobile people who have upper 85 00:06:06,640 --> 00:06:11,320 Speaker 1: middle class tastes and affectations. As such, the term can 86 00:06:11,400 --> 00:06:15,080 Speaker 1: be part of larger discussions of what aspiration, propriety, and 87 00:06:15,160 --> 00:06:21,640 Speaker 1: authenticity even mean. Meanwhile, back in modern France, being bourgeois 88 00:06:21,680 --> 00:06:26,240 Speaker 1: no longer indicates that you have stodgily pedestrian tastes. In fact, 89 00:06:26,560 --> 00:06:31,040 Speaker 1: it's the opposite. In French culture, being bourgeois these days 90 00:06:31,120 --> 00:06:34,679 Speaker 1: is about having effortless style, a good manners, good education, 91 00:06:35,120 --> 00:06:37,640 Speaker 1: and maybe a country house to escape the city to 92 00:06:37,880 --> 00:06:42,360 Speaker 1: on the weekends. The flashy nemesis of the French bourgeois 93 00:06:42,400 --> 00:06:46,120 Speaker 1: is now the nouveau riche, or literally new rich, who 94 00:06:46,400 --> 00:06:50,320 Speaker 1: vulgarly flaunt their wealth and status through a lavish lifestyle, 95 00:06:51,480 --> 00:06:55,120 Speaker 1: which makes it pretty ironic that the American English definition 96 00:06:55,440 --> 00:07:04,719 Speaker 1: of this French word now basically means nouveau riche. Today's 97 00:07:04,720 --> 00:07:07,960 Speaker 1: episode is based on the article bougie Slang How did 98 00:07:08,040 --> 00:07:11,880 Speaker 1: Bourgeoisie become a bad word? On HowStuffWorks dot com written 99 00:07:11,880 --> 00:07:14,920 Speaker 1: by Dave Bruce. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in 100 00:07:14,960 --> 00:07:17,360 Speaker 1: partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by 101 00:07:17,360 --> 00:07:20,280 Speaker 1: Tyler klang A. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. 102 00:07:20,600 --> 00:07:23,920 Speaker 1: Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 103 00:07:24,000 --> 00:07:25,080 Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.