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.
Examples of burgeon in a Sentence
Daniel Fienberg, HollywoodReporter, 30 Dec. 2025
But by the time you're actually invested in the apparently burgeoning romance between the equally excellent Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan as Noa and Steve, things take a turn for the markedly sinister as Noa's dream guy transforms into something quite different.
—Ilana Gordon, Entertainment Weekly, 29 Dec. 2025
Miami’s burgeoning business landscape has made South Florida a destination for entrepreneurs, executives and other high net worth individuals in recent years, said de Nuñez y Lugones.
—Catherine Odom, Miami Herald, 29 Dec. 2025
These burgeoning supermassive black holes could have formed either by the direct gravitational collapse of a humongous gas cloud or from the merger of myriad stellar-mass black holes produced by the core collapse of massive stars in a dense stellar cluster hidden inside a gas cloud.
—Keith Cooper, Space.com, 28 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for burgeon
Cite this Entry
“Burgeon.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/burgeon. Accessed 31 Dec. 2025.
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burgeon
verb
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