Parvenue

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Female equivalent of parvenu. feminine, form-of

    "They have seen women of rank, and parvenues, chaste maidens and anonymas, in a confused and gaudy glare of barbarous splendour."

Adjective
  1. 1
    of or characteristic of a parvenu wordnet
  2. 2
    characteristic of someone who has risen economically or socially but lacks the social skills appropriate for this new position wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
newnouveau richenouveau-richeparvenuparvenuessparvenuess

Example

More examples

"They have seen women of rank, and parvenues, chaste maidens and anonymas, in a confused and gaudy glare of barbarous splendour."

Etymology

Borrowed from French parvenue, feminine past participle of parvenir (“to arrive”), learned borrowing from Latin parvenire, from per- (“through”) + venire (“to come”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.