Bourgeoisies

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A social class characterized by ownership of means of production and a focus on materialistic values and conventional lifestyles
2. A group of people in capitalist societies who control property and wealth, often associated with middle-class values and interests
3. The economic and political elite in a capitalist system, typically striving for social status and financial success while upholding traditional norms

Etymology: The plural "bourgeoisies" is the form of "bourgeoisie," a noun for a property-owning capitalist class, borrowed unchanged from French. The French word itself is built on "bourgeois," which originally named the class of citizens who were the wealthier members of the Third Estate, the commoners of pre-revolutionary France. That French "bourgeois" traces back to a plainly physical idea: "bourgeois" meant "burghers," the inhabitants of a walled town or borough. A medieval town was a place of walls and fortified settlement, so the people who lived inside those walls became the people with the trade, money, and civic standing that the word eventually came to mark. The English noun keeps the French spelling and pronunciation, so "bourgeoisie" still looks like a foreign import. The plural follows the ordinary English pattern for nouns ending in "-ie," adding "s" to form "bourgeoisies," and it is used when speaking of more than one such class.

Synonyms: middle classes, capitalists, plutocrats, business owners, merchants

Antonyms: proletariat, working class, laborers, poor, underclass