jacquerie

noun

jac·​que·​rie ˌzhä-kə-ˈrē 

ˌzha-

often capitalized

: a peasants' revolt

Did you know?

When Was the First jacquerie?

The first jacquerie was an insurrection of peasants against the nobility in northeastern France in 1358, so-named from the nobles' habit of referring contemptuously to any peasant as "Jacques," or "Jacques Bonhomme" (in French bonhomme means "fellow"). It took some time—150 years—for the name of the first jacquerie to become a generalized term for other revolts. The term is also occasionally used to refer to the peasant class, as when Madame Defarge in Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities tells her husband to "consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every hour."

Examples of jacquerie in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

This is a modern-day jacquerie, an emotional wildfire stoked in the provinces and directed against Paris and, most of all, the elite. —The New York Review of Books, 21 Mar. 2019

Word History

Etymology

Middle French, from the French peasant revolt in 1358, from jacque peasant — more at jacket

First Known Use

1523, in the meaning defined above

Podcast

Get Word of the Day delivered to your inbox!