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Bourgeois¹, Louise c. 1563-1636.

French midwife in Henry IV's court. She delivered Marie de Médicis' children, including the future Louis XIII, and wrote an influential obstetrics manual.

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Louise Bourgeois1

Bourgeois², Louise 1911-2010.

French-born American sculptor whose often erotic sculptures are characterized by elongated figures and abstract shapes.

Bour·geois

(br-zhwä), Léon Victor Auguste 1851-1925.

French statesman who was a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague (1903-1925) and helped draft the Covenant of the League of Nations (1919). He won the 1920 Nobel Peace Prize.

bour·geois

(br-zhwä, b- brzhwä′, b-)

n. pl. bourgeois

1. A person belonging to the middle class.

2. A person whose attitudes and behavior are marked by conformity to the standards and conventions of the middle class.

3. In Marxist theory, a member of the property-owning class; a capitalist.

adj.

Of, relating to, or typical of the middle class, especially in holding conventional attitudes and materialistic values.

[French, from Old French burgeis, citizen of a town, from bourg, bourg; see BOURG.]

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

Indo-European Roots

Semitic Roots

The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

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