In the wild: boujie

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Tue Jan 25 03:34:30 UTC 2011


Heard on Unique Eats program, in reference to a hamburger with poached
pears:

"It's a little boujie, but..."

My immediate assumption was that this was some colloquial version of
"bourgeois". And Google showed a healthy representation (24.5K raw). UD
has it going back to 2003 (bouji), but the definitions leave a lot to be
desired. Most suggest that it is some kind of slurred/mumbled version of
"bullshit" (a la Animal House, I suppose). But the latest entry (2010)
seems to be almost exactly on the money:

> A Southern African-American contraction of the word "bourgeoisie",
> used to describe someone rich or in the upper class. Similar meaning
> to "sidity".

The only issue is that the speaker in the program was a female
Asian-American chef (I missed the name--[Lee] Anne Wong?) and definitely
not Southern. (If it is Anne Wong, perhaps she picked it up at FIT...)

OT item of interest: "Cold Stone Creamery is dessert pornography."
Interesting that "porn" is not shortened.

     VS-)

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