parvenu
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Chenoweth, who is as gleaming as a holiday ornament on Liberace’s Christmas tree, arrives at a canny balance of quixotic generosity and parvenu carelessness in her portrayal of a woman she refuses to lampoon.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 9, 2025
But Corya is no vulgar, narcissistic bully and parvenu.
From Slate ● May 21, 2020
His mother, “born of samurai stock” and married to “a parvenu beneath herself,” succumbed to mental illness six months after Ryunosuke’s birth.
From New York Times ● Oct. 12, 2018
Just as the parvenu tries to elevate himself into a higher social realm, the word climber wishes to seem more intelligent than he actually is.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 13, 2017
Not that Hand Cross is great, or altogether pleasing to the eye; for, after all, it is a parvenu of a place, and lacks the Domesday descent of, for instance, Cuckfield.
From The Brighton Road The Classic Highway to the South by Charles G. (Charles George) Harper
Vocabulary lists containing parvenu
English Words Derived from French, List 7
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The Count of Monte Cristo
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One Hundred Years of Solitude
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