Primary
''parvenu'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260124114812-00-⌔
parvenu - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
parvenu (plural parvenus)
- A person who has risen, climbed up, or has been promoted to a higher social class, especially through acquisition of wealth, privileges, or political authority but has not gained social acceptance by those within that new class.
- ✤ But the favourite’s power and influence provoke intense ill-feeling among other courtiers, who regard him as a sinister, usurping parvenu with ideas above his station, or perhaps even a sorcerer.1
Adjective
parvenu (not comparable)
- Being a parvenu; also, like, having the characteristics of, or associated with a parvenu.
- ✤ Loss of money is far the worst, then comes ill-health, and then loss of reputation; loss of reputation is a bad third, for, if a man keeps health and money unimpaired, it will be generally found that his loss of reputation is due to breaches of parvenu conventions only, and not to violations of those older, better established canons whose authority is unquestionable.2
- ✤ The Progressives were of the educated middle class, angry at the rule of parvenu financiers and industrialists.3
- ✤ The majority of the adults, however, viewed Luisa Santiaga as the precious jewel of a rich and powerful family whom a parvenu telegraph operator was courting not for love but self-interest.4
Etymology
Borrowed from French parvenu, past participle of parvenir, from Latin perveniō (“arrive, reach”).
See also parvenue f
Pronunciation
Printed 2026-06-28.
(echo:: @ ⌗)
Link to original Footnotes
2001 January 31, Francis Wheen, “The whole truth about Peter’s friends”, in The Guardian: ↩
1903, Samuel Butler, chapter 66, in The Way of All Flesh: ↩
2001, Norman Birnbaum, After Progress, Oxford University Press: ↩
2003, Edith Grossman, chapter 1, in Living to Tell the Tale, translation of original by Gabriel García Márquez, published 2002: ↩
Secondary
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