Bohemian

How to spell bohemian

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce bohemian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bohemian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to an unconventional, artistic way of living that ignores ordinary social rules.
2. nounA person who lives an unconventional, artistic life outside mainstream social conventions.

Bohemian in a sentence

• adjective

  The loft had a relaxed, bohemian feel, full of canvases and mismatched furniture.

• noun

  Her grandmother was a true bohemian who sold paintings at the market and rented a tiny attic.

• adjective

  After quitting the bank, he embraced a more bohemian lifestyle of travel and painting.

• noun

  The poet styled himself as a bohemian, indifferent to money and respectability.

Where does bohemian come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the place name Bohemia, a historic region in what is now the Czech Republic. The unconventional, artistic sense, however, took a detour through France: the French word boheme was applied to the Roma (then called Gypsies), because they were wrongly believed to have entered Western Europe through Bohemia. By the early 1800s French writers had extended boheme to penniless artists and writers who lived freely and outside ordinary social rules, much as those wandering communities were imagined to do. English borrowed this figurative sense in the mid 1800s, helped along by Henri Murger's stories of Parisian artists and later by the opera La Boheme. The spelling trap lies in the silent setup: the 'h' sits quietly after the 'bo', and the unstressed '-ian' ending is easy to garble, so remembering the buried country name Bohemia helps anchor it.

How the word is built

• Bohem- (from Bohemia, region of central Europe)
• -ian (adjective/noun suffix: belonging to)