White-collar

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Of or pertaining to office work and workers; contrasted with blue-collar.

    "This being a motion picture star is a real business. It's a job, and not always a white collar one, either."

  2. 2
    Pertaining to the culture of white-collar workers, as values, politics, etc.; contrasted with blue-collar.
Adjective
  1. 1
    of or designating salaried professional or clerical work or workers wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
black-coatedoffice job

Example

More examples

"White-collar workers face many difficulties."

Etymology

From the color of dress shirts worn by professional and clerical workers, as opposed to the rugged denim and chambray shirts normally worn by manual workers.

Related phrases

white-collar boxingwhite-collar crimewhite-collar workwhite-collar worker

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