DCHP-1 Online

bourgeois [< Cdn F]

• 1a n. Hist. master; employer; boss.

  See also: booshway  

  • a1855  (1956)  The Canadians or voyageurs dignify their master by the name of Bourgeois, a turn [of phrase] handed down from the days of the French in the Province of Canada.
  • 1791  (1904)  . . . where great exertion is necessary, all distinction is laid aside, and it is tel maitre, tel valet, the bourgeois must work as hard as the engages. . . .
  • 1905  (1946)  My bourgeois, in common with his brother merchants, made a good thing of purchasing U.E. rights.
  • 1961  . . . the "bourgeois" [was] the man with enough capital to pay for a trading license and to invest in a quantity of items for barter.

• 1b n. Lumbering See quotes.

  • 1829  Lumbermen and Shantymen are nearly synonymous; with this difference, that the former are generally the masters, or, what the Canadians call, the Bourgeois of the latter.
  • 1854  If you have a little property, you will find a class of gentlemen known among lumbermen as the big bourgeois (which is the synonym of boss) who will advance you, at least to the value of your property, what are called supplies. . . .

• 2a n. a stock-holding partner in the Montreal-based fur companies, especially the North West Company, who represented the company the year round at the trading posts in the fur country.

  See also: North West Company  wintering partner (def. 1)  

  • 1793  (1933)  A head clerk or Bourgeouis is allowed by the concern [N.W. Co.] to have an extra man in his canoe to wait upon him.
  • 1855  (1956)  But here we might well explain what is meant by a "titled charge," according to North West nomenclature, clerks have charge of posts, Bourgeois of districts.
  • 1963  If these "freemen" . . . no longer had obligations to the companies they had served, many retained a sense of loyalty to their old masters, a loyalty that was encouraged by many a "bourgeois" or factor.

• 2b n. See wintering partner (def. 2) 1905 quote.

  See also: wintering partner (def. 2)  

  • 1824  (1931)  Altho' they will not fight for us they always have a warm side to their old Bourgeois, in fact consider themselves under the [H.B.] Coys protection and look up to their representatives as Fathers.
  • 1833  (1963)  [He] exhorted the lazy Bourgeois to put his garden in good trim.
  • 1855  (1956)  [The canoemen] sing to keep time to their paddles. They sing to keep off drowsiness caused by their fatigue, and they sing because the Bourgeois likes it.
  • 1880  He was the bourgeois, or master of the place, a Scotchman from the Isles.
  • 1955  His portage load of gun, barometer, dish, haversack with books and axe was a tolerable burden, even for a bourgeois.

• 3 n. Obs. See quote.

  • 1860  (1956)  . . . this shaggy bourgeois--as the Canadians often call the bear. . . .