Definition of épater in English:

verb

• Shock people who have attitudes or views perceived as conventional or complacent.

  ‘the artist was trying to épater les bourgeois again with ‘Altar’, made of bloodstained stretchers’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Whether this was born of a genuine revolutionary spirit or just to épater les bourgeois probably no longer matters.’
  • ‘If his views are sincerely held, there sometimes seems to be an element of pour épater les bourgeois in his expression of them.’
  • ‘Did her interest in photography owe as much to a real feeling for art or journalism as it did to an almost erotically charged desire, only too common among bored suburban teenagers, to épater les bourgeois?’