a class of people below the middle class, having the lowest social rank or standing due to low income, lack of skills or education, and the like.
(broadly) working class.
of or relating to the lower class
inferior or vulgar
First recorded in 1765–75
First recorded in 1890–95
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Much smaller shares, in the single digits, placed themselves at the far ends of the class spectrum, as upper class or lower class.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 26, 2026
"Do you want to make savings from falling pupil numbers, or do you want to maintain spending the way it is, and have lower class sizes?"
From BBC ● Jun. 1, 2026
"Before then, Americans were typically more likely to self-identify as members of the middle or upper-middle class and less likely to say they belonged to the working or lower class."
From Salon ● Nov. 2, 2024
Instead, she and two of her sisters each moved to Mexico City to do one of the few jobs available to them as lower class women: domestic work.
From Seattle Times ● May 26, 2024
What is key to America’s understanding of class is the persistent belief—despite all evidence to the contrary—that anyone, with the proper discipline and drive, can move from a lower class to a higher class.
From "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander
They are particularly alarmed about certain groups possibly ending up paying more for loans than their peers — a daunting prospect today given the cost of living crisis among the nation’s middle- and lower-class.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 17, 2025
“The people who are suffering are the middle-class and lower-class people that just love sports ... because it’s our escape from the real world.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 7, 2025
I was raised in a lower-class, white, rural American household in the 1970s and '80s.
From Salon ● Nov. 3, 2024
Over the course of this war, the money from the Delian League enriched many lower-class Athenians, who found employment as rowers in the fleet.
From Textbooks ● Apr. 19, 2023
The middle class rather is tempted by the pastoral impulse to deny its difference from the lower class—even to attempt cheap imitations of lower-class life.
From "Hunger of Memory" by Richard Rodriguez
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
