bougie

plural bougies

1. medicineA tapered cylindrical instrument for introducing an object into a tubular anatomical structure, or to dilate such a structure, as with an esophageal bougie.

   2 more examples

   "There, as my lord, with achromatic glass, / "O'erlooks St. James's Park, and on the grass, / "Beneath his mansion's half-closed window spies / "Two crouching urchins' gross obscenities, / "He turns his eager gaze, adjusts the screw, / "And brings their unwashed nudities in view. / "That spot, concealed by two o'er hanging hills, / "Foul sweat and fœtid excrement distils, / "Yet frowsy, there the pipe-clayed soldier sports, / "And bishops hold episcopalian courts. / "'Tis there the Bath empiric's finger guides, / "The oiled bougie ; and as the dildo slides / "Besmeared, to meet last night's descending meal, / "Oft makes the strictures he pretends to heal.

   1866, “Don Leon”, in Don Leon ; A Poem by the Late Lord Byron, Author of Childe Harold, Don Juan, &c., &c. and forming part of the private journal of His Lordship, supposed to have been entirely destoyed by Thos. Moore. To which is added Leon to Annabella; An epistle from Lord Byron to Lady Byron. (Poetry), →OCLC, pages 44, 51–52

   2001, Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Alfred A. Knopf (2001), 12, I was not too sure, as a child, what doctors "did," and glimpses of catheters and bougies in their kidney dishes, retractors and speculums, rubber gloves, catgut thread, and forecepts - all this, I think, rather frightened me, though it fascinated me too.

2. A wax candle.

comparative bougier · superlative bougiest · alternative bourgie · alternative boojie · alternative boujee · alternative boujée

1. derogatoryslangusuallyAfrican-American VernacularBehaving like or pertaining to people of a higher social status, middle-class / bourgeois people (sometimes carrying connotations of fakeness, elitism, or snobbery).

   Shangela is kind of bougie, but she's also your homegirl.

   2010 February 1, “Gone With the Window”, in RuPaul's Drag Race, season 2, episode 1

   5 more examples

   Hey, look, man, I haven't changed, I'm not gonna change and I'm not down with this bougie stuff.

   1991 September 23, “Will Gets a Job”, in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, season 2, episode 3

   Called “bougie” when she was growing up, even though she’d never considered herself close to that, Ewing has turned the word around, using it as the title of a fictitious magazine she has dreamed up.

   2007 October 12, L. Kent Wolgamott, “Satire pervades the series of fictional magazine covers”, in The Lincoln Journal Star

   I'll be on the movie screens / Magazines and bougie scenes

   2007, “Glamorous”, performed by Fergie

   I don't need you or your brand new Benz / Or your bougie friends

   2010, “Sleazy”, performed by Ke$ha

   Bougie attitude, I'm from the West End / I want the finer things in life

   2023, “Outside”, performed by Br3nya

   Synonyms: chichi, classy, high and mighty, ritzy, saditty, snobby, snooty, posh

2. CanadaUKslangFancy or good-looking, without connotations of snobbery or pretentiousness.

plural bougies

1. derogatoryslangusuallychiefly African-American VernacularA person who exhibits bougie behavior.

   1 more example

   All in all, Black Anglo-Saxons today remain a variegated group, and their numbers continue, relentlessly, to multiply. / In the late 1960's^([sic – meaning 1960s]) following the first appearance of this book, The Black Anglo-Saxons, street militants and conscious members of the Black middle class popularly called them "bougies."

   1991 [1965], Nathan Hare, “Introduction”, in The Black Anglo-Saxons, page iii

plural bougies

1. alternativeAlternative spelling of bowjy (“shed for cattle or sheep”).

plural Bougies

1. countableuncountableA surname from French.
2. countableuncountableFormer name of Béjaïa, Algeria.