Word.ws English Dictionary

parvenue

parvenue is the female equivalent of parvenu.

Meaning of parvenu

Noun

parvenu (plural parvenus)

  1. A person who has risen, climbed up, or has been promoted to a higher social class, especially through acquisition of wealth, privileges, or political authority but has not gained social acceptance by those within that new class.
    • But the favourite's power and influence provoke intense ill-feeling among other courtiers, who regard him as a sinister, usurping parvenu with ideas above his station, or perhaps even a sorcerer.2001 January 31, Francis Wheen, “The whole truth about Peter's friends”, in The Guardian
    Synonyms:
    arriviste

See all 2 meanings of parvenu

Synonyms of parvenue

Forms of parvenue

pluralparvenues

Origin of parvenue

Borrowed from French parvenue, feminine past participle of parvenir (“to arrive”), learned borrowing from Latin parvenire, from per- (“through”) + venire (“to come”).

Questions about parvenue

What is parvenue the female equivalent of?
Parvenue is the female equivalent of parvenu.

Words near parvenue in the dictionary

  1. parve
  2. Parveen
  3. Parveens
  4. parvenu
  5. parvenudom
  6. parvenue
  7. parvenues
  8. parvenuess
  9. parvenuesses
  10. parvenuism
  11. parvenus

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: parvenue (page history and authors); parvenu (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.

Last updated:

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