parvenu

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The hostility that prevails between the peer and the parvenu is the most natural thing in the world, and is no more to be wondered at than that between the hare and the hound.

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Definitions (7)

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  1. noun A person who has suddenly risen to a higher social and economic class and has not yet gained social acceptance by others in that class.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (2)

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Examples (50)

  • Crozat the parvenu--Marquis du Chatel, forsooth, with his scissors and yardstick for device He questioned me closely concerning the personages present, and what they said. —  The Black Wolf's Breed A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening in the Reign of Louis XIV
  • The envy and the latent hatred against the parvenu, the knight who had risen higher than all others, and who had humiliated the senatorial aristocracy with his good fortune, were reawakened, and the senate and public opinion turned fiercely against him. —  The Women of the Caesars
  • "He was swollen with the arrogance of a parvenu, and thinking apparently that he could use me like one of those poor devils who depend upon him for a crust of bread, he permitted himself to fly into a passion; but it did not succeed at all. —  Diderot and the Encyclopædists (Vol 1 of 2)
  • It is the bad taste of a parvenu, the mania of a grocer who has accumulated money and who enjoys seeing himself in red, white, and yellow, with his watch-charms dangling over his stomach, his bewhiskered chin and his children gathered around him On one of the towers, and in spite of the most ordinary common sense, they have built a glass rotunda which is used for a dining-room. —  Over Strand and Field
  • But Kolina had no feelings of the parvenu, and she was always a general favorite. —  International Weekly Miscellany - Volume 1, No. 7, August 12, 1850
 

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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. French, from past participle of parvenir, to arrive, from Latin pervenīre : per, through; see per1 in Indo-European roots + venīre, to come; see gwā- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from French parvenu, a parvenu, from parvenu, successful, past participle of parvenir = Italian pervenire, arrive, succeed, thrive, from Latin pervenire, arrive, from per, through, + venire, come: see come.
 

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/ˈpɑrvɛnju/
by American Heritage

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