petite bourgeoisie

noun

|Updated on: 16 Jul 2018

Definition of petite bourgeoisie

: the lower middle class including especially small shopkeepers and artisans

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Recent Examples of petite bourgeoisie from the Web

Image This tournament, thus far, has belonged not to soccer’s great aristocratic houses, but to its petite bourgeoisie.

— rory smith, New York Times, "This Is When the World Cup Surprises End. Usually.," 29 June 2018
Each mobilized men and women from a broad spectrum of the population but had particular attraction for the petite bourgeoisie.

— nancy k. maclean, Slate Magazine, "America’s Brush With Fascism," 20 Mar. 2017
The airport is to America’s petite bourgeoisie—the small-time capitalists and traveling salesmen who delivered us to Trump—what the factory is to the white working class: a symbol of how much better things used to be.

— henry grabar, Slate Magazine, "How the airport came to embody our national psychosis.," 7 Sep. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'petite bourgeoisie.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.