petty bourgeois

noun

1. petit bourgeois.

Word History and Origins

Origin of petty bourgeois¹

First recorded in 1885–90

Example Sentences

“What they had hoped for themselves and their petty bourgeois dreams — they’re not that different from ours at all,” he says.

From Los Angeles Times

Nietzsche's own petty bourgeois resentment of the people, which was the basis of his rejection of the modern state — it allows people to vote and to form unions, compounding the error of Christianity, which allows everyone a soul of equal value to God — is a case in point.

From Salon

Leftists in the past might have been slandered as "petty bourgeois" or "revisionists"; these days, calling someone a "neoliberal" is fighting words.

From Salon

“Petty bourgeois,” she corrected him.

From The New Yorker

Kierkegaard extrapolated a spiritual failing from that class position: “Devoid of imagination, as the petty bourgeois always is, he lives within a certain orbit of trivial experience as to how things come about, what is possible, what usually happens, no matter whether he is a tapster or a prime minister.”

From New York Times