Meanings
alternative épater la bourgeoisie
- literaryTo 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
- Frenchépater le bourgeois“amaze the bourgeois”
- Englishépater le bourgeois
Borrowed from French épater le bourgeois (“amaze the bourgeois”).
More words from French
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
épater le bourgeois. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/%C3%A9pater%20le%20bourgeois
“épater le bourgeois.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/%C3%A9pater%20le%20bourgeois. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “épater le bourgeois,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/%C3%A9pater%20le%20bourgeois.
Source: épater le bourgeois on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.