bijou

UK/biˈʒuː/

bijou noun: a jewel.

Noun

bijou (plural bijous or bijoux)

A jewel.
A piece of jewelry; a trinket.
A small intricate piece of metalwork.
- […]a saucepan on the hob, and a brazen bijou over the fireplace designed for the suspension of a roasting-jack.1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter VI, in Great Expectations […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 102

bijou (comparative more bijou, superlative most bijou)

(Polari) Small; little.
- You may have vada'd one of our tiny bijou masterpiecettes, heartface.1968, Kenneth Horne, Bona Prods (Round the Horne)
- We, the Sister of Perpetual Indulgence and the Gathered Faithful, do hereby invoke the spirit of our beloved Muffin the Mule, to recognize the bona work of Mr. Derek Jarman in promulgating Universal Joy […] in his bijou masterpiecettes[.]1997, Ian Lucas, “The Color of His Eyes: Polari and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence”, in Anna Livia, Kira Hall, editors, Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, page 91
Small and elegant.
- I soon found Briony Lodge. It is a bijou villa, with a garden at the back, but built out in front right up to the road, two stories. Chubb lock to the door. Large sitting-room on the right side, well furnished, with long windows almost to the floor, and those preposterous English window fasteners...1891, A Scandal in Bohemia
- In small towns like Soldau a small area accommodates the town hall, the church, several miniature squares, a monument to somebody or other, perhaps more than one, all sorts of shops, beerhouses, a post office, a bank, and there may be a bijou park behind wrought-iron railings, then the streets and...1989 [1971], Willetts, H. T., transl., August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, translation of Август 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, →ISBN, page 126
Intricate; finely made.

ছোটো সুন্দর রত্ন, অলংকার, ছোটো ও সুন্দর

little, small, compact: ചെറുതും സുന്ദരവുമായ, ചെറിയ, വലിപ്പം കുറഞ്ഞ, ഹ്രസ്വമായ, ഒതുക്കമുള്ള, പറ്റിച്ചേർ കിടന്നുക്കുന്ന

Polari, used for decades by gay men, actors, and theatre performers and which famously appeared on primetime radio show Round The Horne, has been brought up-to-date with a bijou iPhone appette.2012 August 5, Paul, “Bijou Polari Appette pre-varda’d”, in Gay History, archived from the original on 14 Nov 2012:
It is a bijou villa, with a garden at the back, but built out in front right up to the road, two stories.1891, A Scandal in Bohemia:

Borrowed from French bijou.

Borrowed from Sabir bijou, ultimately from Occitan pichon (“small, little”), influenced by English bijou (“jewel”).

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

What does bijou mean?: Bijou means a jewel.
What is bijou in Bengali?: Bijou in Bengali is ছোটো সুন্দর রত্ন, অলংকার, ছোটো ও সুন্দর. See Bijou meaning in Bengali.
How do you use bijou in a sentence?: Polari, used for decades by gay men, actors, and theatre performers and which famously appeared on primetime radio show Round The Horne, has been brought up-to-date with a bijou iPhone appette.
What part of speech is bijou?: Bijou can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce bijou?: Bijou is pronounced /biˈʒuː/ (UK).
What is the plural of bijou?: The plural of bijou is bijous.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-bijou.wav.

Cite this entry: “bijou.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bijou. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.