In the wild: boujie

[George Thompson]

> My immediate assumption was that this was some colloquial version of "bourgeois".

Correctly, too.

The indispensable HDAS seems not to have this, (while remaining indispensable); Green's Dictionary of Slang has citations going back to the mid 1970s; it was discussed here, to no benefit, in 2002.
I haven't checked OED.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
Date: Monday, January 24, 2011 10:35 pm
Subject: In the wild: boujie
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> 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-)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org