boujee
/BOO-zhee/adjective
Meaning
Boujee describes a person, place, object, or experience that seems expensive, upscale, stylish, or indulgent. It can praise someone’s taste or celebrate treating yourself, but it can also suggest that the display of wealth is excessive, pretentious, or above someone’s usual station.
- 1. Luxurious, upscale, or expensive-looking: a boujee hotel, dinner, outfit, or apartment.
- 2. Having refined or costly tastes, especially a noticeable interest in comfort, status, or designer goods.
- 3. Playfully or critically pretentious, flashy, or overly concerned with appearing high-class.
Examples
“This rooftop brunch is so boujee.”
“She got boujee coffee and a tiny pastry for $24.”
“The apartment is boujee, but the rent is criminal.”
“I’m feeling boujee tonight, so we’re ordering dessert too.”
Origin and spread
Boujee is an alternate spelling of bougie, a shortened form of bourgeois. Merriam-Webster describes the modern slang sense of bougie as emerging in African American English in the 1960s, initially criticizing richer or more upwardly mobile Black people perceived as middle-class. The spelling boujee is documented in the title of Migos’s single “Bad and Boujee,” released on October 28, 2016. The song’s viral online circulation and chart success helped carry boujee into wider popular usage, where it broadened from a critique of class performance to a generally positive way to describe something fancy or indulgent. The older word bougie also has unrelated candle and medical senses; those are not the source of this slang meaning.
How to use it
Boujee is informal and often self-aware. It can be affectionate when someone is celebrating a nicer meal, outfit, or vacation, but it may sound judgmental when aimed at a person rather than a thing. The spelling bougie is also common and may be more familiar in writing.
