embourgeoisement

[ em-boor-zhwahz-muhnt, -mahnt, ahm-; French ahn-boor-zhwaz-mahn ]

noun

1. the acquisition or adoption of middle-class values and manners.

embourgeoisement

/ ɑ̃burʒwazmɑ̃ /

noun

1. the process of becoming middle-class; the assimilation into the middle class of traditionally working-class people

Word History and Origins

Origin of embourgeoisement¹

< French, equivalent to s’embourgeois ( er ) to become bourgeois ( em- ¹, bourgeois ¹ ) + -ment -ment

Word History and Origins

Origin of embourgeoisement¹

from French, from en- ¹+ bourgeois ¹

Example Sentences

“We may as well recognize,” writes Said, in describing why Europe needed this idea of the “licentious” East, “that for 19th-century Europe, with its increasing embourgeoisement, sex had been institutionalized to a very considerable degree. On the one hand, there was no such thing as ‘free’ sex, and on the other, sex in society entailed a web of legal, moral, even political and economic obligations of a detailed and certainly encumbering sort.”

From New York Times

Avedon enjoyed his rapid embourgeoisement.

From New York Times

In the cards’ forced festivity, their embourgeoisement of celebration, freedom rang.

From New York Times

In later years, Mr. Stone shifted into what he described as “embourgeoisement.”

From Washington Post

In 1963, though, the sociologists John H. Goldthorpe and David Lockwood disputed this widely held “embourgeoisement thesis,” arguing that the erosion of social class had not been as great as believed.

From New York Times