working class

¹

noun

1. those persons working for wages, especially in manual labor.

2. the social or economic class composed of these workers.

working-class

²

[wur-king-klas]

adjective

1. of, relating to, or characteristic of the working class, the class of wage earners or manual laborers.

   He came from a working-class neighborhood in Nova Scotia, where his mother took in laundry and his father had a job in the coal mine.

working class

noun

1. Also called: proletariat. the social stratum, usually of low status, that consists of those who earn wages, esp as manual workers Compare lower class middle class upper class

adjective

1. of, relating to, or characteristic of the working class

working class

1. In the United States, the population of blue-collar workers, particularly skilled and semiskilled laborers, who differ in values, but not necessarily in income, from the middle class. In Marxism, this term refers to propertyless factory workers.

Other Word Forms

• working-class adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of working class¹

First recorded in 1805–15

Origin of working class²

First recorded in 1830–40