Meanings
comparative bolshier · superlative bolshiest · alternative bolshy · alternative bolshi
- UKDifficult or rebellious.
Kate, don't be so bolshie!
3 more examples
It's quite possible that I and my pals were nasty bolshy little schoolboys who thoroughly deserved to be thrashed through the gorse bushes in the dead of the night[.]
1983, Bill Oddie, Gone Birding, London: Methuen, page 108Rachel came in, and Nick felt he'd been caught larking about, Catherine squashing him like some bolshie teenage attempt at seduction.
2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 16, in The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN"How I looked or what I was wearing had become more import than my politics, " the 65-year-old told BBC Wales Breakfast. "I can be bolshie if I'm fighting for a cause or for someone else, but deep down I'm very sensitive."
2026 January 2, Nathan Bevan, “Weight-loss jabs MP faced 'constant cruel abuse' from trolls”, in BBC NewsSynonyms: contrary, contumacious, perverse, recalcitrant
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectiveDifficult or rebellious.
More synonyms by meaning
nounemotionally charged terms used to refer to extreme radicals or revolutionaries
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
- Russianбольшевики́“majority faction”
- Russianбольшеви́к
- Englishbolshie
From Bolshevik (Russian большеви́к (bolʹševík), the socialist party in the 1918 Russian Revolution, from Russian большевики́ (bolʹševikí, “majority faction”), + -ie.
More words from Russian
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
bolshie. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/bolshie
“bolshie.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/bolshie. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “bolshie,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/bolshie.
Source: bolshie on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.