[a. F. bougie wax candle, from Bougie (Arab. Bijiyah), a town in Algeria which carried on a trade in wax.]
1. A wax-candle, a wax light.
1755. Mem. Capt. P. Drake, II. ii. 40. Supplied with … Bougies, otherwise Wax-lights, for their own Apartments.
1817. Mar. Edgeworth, Tales & Novels (Rtldg.), IX. xii. 109. Snatching up a bougie, the wick of which scattered fire behind him, he left the room.
c. 1865. Letheby, in Circ. Sc., I. 97/1. Stearic candles will supersede every other description of bougie.
2. Med. A thin flexible surgical instrument made of waxed linen, india-rubber, metal, etc., for introduction into the passages of the body, for the purpose of exploration, dilatation, or medication.
An armed or caustic bougie has a piece of caustic fixed within its extremity.
1754–64. Smellie, Midwif., III. 513. He introduced a large bougie which went up a great way.
1758. J. S., trans. Le Dran’s Observ. Surg. (1771), 222. Bougies, contrived of waxed Linen rolled up.
1804. Abernethy, Surg. Observ., 201. I introduced a small hollow bougie … into the œsophagus, and injected half a pint of milk and water.
