épater la bourgeoisie
épater la bourgeoisie is the alternative form of épater le bourgeois.
Meaning of épater le bourgeois
Verb
épater le bourgeois
- To scandalize, provoke the middle class.
- All that was needed were the heroes willing to act out the fantasies the public now accepted as reality: the hero, as hedonist, who dares to do in public what the public wants to see. It was épater les bourgeois as a bourgeois calling.1987, Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students
Origin of épater la bourgeoisie
Borrowed from French épater (“amaze”) la (“the”) bourgeoisie (“middle class”).
Questions about épater la bourgeoisie
- What is épater la bourgeoisie the alternative form of?
- Épater la bourgeoisie is the alternative form of épater le bourgeois.
Words near épater la bourgeoisie in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: épater la bourgeoisie (page history and authors); épater le bourgeois (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “épater la bourgeoisie.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/%C3%A9pater_la_bourgeoisie. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.