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 calledproletariat 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 Words From

• working-class adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of working class¹

First recorded in 1805–15

Origin of working class²

First recorded in 1830–40

Example Sentences

They’re there to make our working class better off for what we have to go through being so isolated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

From Fortune

In 2017, he gave an interview about how Hollywood doesn’t tell enough stories about the working class.

From Vox

The new nation was strikingly free of the British upper-class fear that educating the working class would give it dangerous ideas — with the major exception of slave­ owners, who withheld schooling for that very reason.

From ProPublica

It depends on your angle, to be honest, Carlos, I think that I grew up a very working class kid in Rhode Island.

From Ozy

I came in from a working class family and I thought of them more like my father, my uncle, who were drivers.

From Time

More to the point, Huckabee has a natural appeal to a party that has come to represent the bulk of working class white voters.

From The Daily Beast

But in more middle-class and working-class neighborhoods, sessions are typically a fourth of that price.

From The Daily Beast

You mix up English working-class gruffness with African-American soul from the Deep South.

From The Daily Beast

In the large cities the urbanized working class were slaves to a plutocracy.

From The Daily Beast

Not surprisingly, many middle and working class voters, particularly whites, have deserted the Democrats in increasing numbers.

From The Daily Beast

The universal ignorance of the working class broke down the aspiring force of genius.

From Project Gutenberg

He defended the rights of the Homestead workers, the cause of the whole working class.

From Project Gutenberg

The Homestead workers are but a very small part of the American working class.

From Project Gutenberg

Nellie was always jealous of the welfare of the working class, and was ever vigilant as to its interests.

From Project Gutenberg

The congregation of Saul-street chapel is almost entirely of a working-class character.

From Project Gutenberg