bougie

noun

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

   “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.
3. (derogatory, slang, usually)A person who exhibits bougie behavior.

   “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."”

4. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative spelling of bowjy (“shed for cattle or sheep”).

adj

1. (derogatory, slang, usually)Behaving like or pertaining to people of a higher social status, middle-class / bourgeois people (sometimes carrying connotations of fakeness, elitism, or snobbery).

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

   “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.”

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

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

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

2. (British, Canada, slang)Fancy or good-looking, without the same connotations of snobbery or pretentiousness as in sense 1.

name

1. (countable, uncountable)A surname from French.
2. (countable, uncountable)Former name of Béjaïa, Algeria.