prole

[prohl, proh-lee]

noun

Informal.

1. a member of the proletariat.

2. a person who performs routine tasks in a society.

adjective

1. proletarian.

prole

/ prəʊl /

noun

1. derogatory,  short for proletarian

Word History and Origins

Origin of prole¹

First recorded in 1885–90; shortened form of proletariat

Example Sentences

He points to Orwell’s line in “Nineteen Eighty-Four”: “If there is hope, it lies in the proles.”

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In the Roman Empire, the games at the Circus Maximus were an amusement and a distraction, a token to the proles as a substitute for being able to exercise any political power.

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Last year gave us “The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe” with Eddie Marsan as an angry prole who chose to paddle away from society.

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At that time he is merely the chairman of the Long Island State Park Commission, and his antagonists are not yet sympathetic proles but out-of-touch gentry.

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In language as crass and cadenced as gunfire, Mamet turned their man-eat-man philosophy, which some call capitalism, into brutal prole poetry: a poetry of predation, you might even say.

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