proletariat
Plural: proletariats
Noun
- a social class comprising those who do manual labor or work for wages
- The lowest class of society; also, the lower classes of society generally; the masses.
- Wage earners collectively; people who own no capital and depend on their labour for survival; the working class, especially when seen as engaged in a class struggle with the bourgeoisie (“the capital-owning class”).
- The lowest class of citizens, who had no property and few rights, and were regarded as contributing only their offspring to the state.
Origin / Etymology
From French prolétariat (“proletariats as a class; state of being a proletariat”), from Latin prōlētārius (“belonging to the lowest class of citizens, whose only contribution to the state was their offspring; member of this class”) + French -at (suffix denoting actions or the results of actions). Prōlētārius is derived from prōlēs (“offspring, posterity”) + -ārius (suffix forming adjectives from nouns, or forming nouns denoting agents of use from other nouns); prōlēs is from pro- (prefix meaning ‘bringing forth or into being; bringing into the open’) + *olēs (a variant of *oleō (“to grow”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- (“to grow, nourish”)).
Synonyms
labor, labour, working class, prole, proletarian, proletary
Antonyms
Scrabble Score: 13
proletariat: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordproletariat: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
proletariat: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary