Bijou
adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A jewel.
- 2 a small and delicately worked piece wordnet
- 3 A piece of jewelry; a trinket.
- 4 A small intricate piece of metalwork.
"[…]a saucepan on the hob, and a brazen bijou over the fireplace designed for the suspension of a roasting-jack."
- 1 Small; little. Polari
"You may have vada'd one of our tiny bijou masterpiecettes, heartface."
- 2 Small and elegant.
"I soon found Briony Lodge. It is a bijou villa, with a garden at the back, but built out in front right up to the road, two stories. Chubb lock to the door. Large sitting-room on the right side, well furnished, with long windows almost to the floor, and those preposterous English window fasteners which a child could open."
- 3 Intricate; finely made.
Example
More examples"[…]a saucepan on the hob, and a brazen bijou over the fireplace designed for the suspension of a roasting-jack."
Etymology
Borrowed from French bijou.
Borrowed from Sabir bijou, ultimately from Occitan pichon (“small, little”), influenced by English bijou (“jewel”).
Related phrases
More for "bijou"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.