What does "lower-class" mean?

Not of the elite, of the peasantry or working-class.

What is a synonym for "lower-class"?

Common synonyms include: bankrupt, broke, broken, close to the bone, emptyhanded, hard up.

Lower-class

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective

1
Not of the elite, of the peasantry or working-class.
"The lower-class people have little chance of advancement."
2
Unrefined.
"His lower-class tastes tended to run to three-stooges movies and cheap drink."

Adjective

1
occupying the lowest socioeconomic position in a society wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

bankrupt broke broken close to the bone emptyhanded hard up

Antonyms

All antonyms

moneyed rich middle-class upper-class

Example

More examples

"The notion of upper-class and lower-class among humans in this world is a topic likely to be found in a woman's essay. Anyone who thinks that falls in the lower-class category of humans."

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.