Herman Wouk
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Burgeon arrived in Middle English as burjonen, a borrowing from the Anglo-French verb burjuner, meaning "to bud or sprout." Burgeon is often used figuratively, as when writer Ta-Nehisi Coates used it in his 2008 memoir The Beautiful Struggle: "… I was in the burgeoning class of kids whose families made too much for financial aid but not enough to make tuition payments anything less than a war." Usage commentators have objected to the use of burgeon to mean "to flourish" or "to grow rapidly," insisting that any figurative use should stay true to the word's earliest literal meaning and distinguish budding or sprouting from subsequent growing. But the sense of burgeon that indicates growing or expanding and prospering (as in "the burgeoning music scene" or "the burgeoning international market") has been in established use for decades and is, in fact, the most common use of burgeon today.
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Examples of burgeon in a Sentence
David Zipper, Vox, 13 Nov. 2024
There are fresh reasons to go, including a burgeoning wine scene that benefits from wide swaths of fertile ground around the Popocatépetl volcano, some 40 miles west of the city limits.
—Bloomberg, The Mercury News, 12 Nov. 2024
Research is ongoing to address concerns that increased use of doxycycline to prevent STIs might help fuel the burgeoning drug-resistant pathogen crisis.
—Benjamin Ryan, NBC News, 12 Nov. 2024
As my colleague Kiera Butler has reported, Lancaster County is home to a burgeoning Christian nationalist movement.
—Serena Lin, Them, 4 Nov. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Burgeon.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/burgeon. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024.
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burgeon
verb
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