lower class

¹

[ loh-er ]

noun

1. 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.
2. (broadly) working class.

lower-class

²

[ loh-er-klas, -klahs ]

adjective

1. of, relating to, or characteristic of the lower class:

   lower-class values.

lower class

noun

1. See working class, upper class, middle class
   the social stratum having the lowest position in the social hierarchy Compare middle class upper class working class

adjective

1. of or relating to the lower class
2. inferior or vulgar

Word History and Origins

Origin of lower class¹

First recorded in 1765–75

Origin of lower class²

First recorded in 1890–95

Example Sentences

If there is no such vacancy, said employee will have the right of competition for retention in equal and the next successively lower classes in which he or she has served satisfactorily.

From Voice of San Diego

The differences between men’s and women’s coping methods may have derived from the gendered behavior in their lives before the war, in which men ate and women cooked – at least in the middle and lower classes.

From No Straight News

But, Farrell found that almost all the women she spoke to were from lower-class farming families.

From The Daily Beast

The number who feel lower class has swelled from 25% in 2008 to an almost doubled 49% in 2014 according to CNN.

From The Daily Beast

The upper middle class, in short, becomes just as “lazy” as the lower class is said to appear in the Republican imagination.

From The Daily Beast

The show is about the Belchers, a lower class family who owns and operates a burger joint.

From The Daily Beast

Behind her back they called Thatcher “Hilda”—her middle name—because of its lower-class origins.

From The Daily Beast

The lower class were idle and lazy, and willing to serve any sovereign who appealed to them by ostentation.

From Project Gutenberg

From this state it progresses by successive stages, each of which has some relation in form to a lower class.

From Project Gutenberg

Well, digging back in my sociology courses, I would say it was upper-lower class, if there is such a classification.

From Project Gutenberg

For the most part, it is upon women of the lower class that the property-laws most hardly press.

From Project Gutenberg

Then, among the peasantry or lower class—Here are Seven Hundred who stood well where he planted them.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• proletariat
• working class