WORKING CLASS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does working class mean? 

• WORKING CLASS (noun)
  The noun WORKING CLASS has 1 sense:

1. a social class comprising those who do manual labor or work for wages

  Familiarity information: WORKING CLASS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WORKING CLASS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A social class comprising those who do manual labor or work for wages

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

labor; labour; proletariat; working class

Context example:

there is a shortage of skilled labor in this field

Hypernyms ("working class" is a kind of...):

class; social class; socio-economic class; stratum (people having the same social, economic, or educational status)

Meronyms (members of "working class"):

prole; proletarian; worker (a member of the working class (not necessarily employed))

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "working class"):

labor force; labor pool (the source of trained people from which workers can be hired)

lumpenproletariat ((Marxism) the unorganized lower levels of the proletariat who are not interested in revolutionary advancement)

organized labor (employees who are represented by a labor union)

 Context examples 

In fact, he had a comfortable feeling that he was vastly superior to these wordy maniacs of the working class.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

She reminded him of Lizzie Connolly, though there was less of fire and gorgeous flaunting life in her than in that other girl of the working class whom he had seen twice.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

It was Sunday night, and they found the small hall packed by the Oakland socialists, chiefly members of the working class.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Foolishly, in the past, he had conceived that all well-groomed persons above the working class were persons with power of intellect and vigor of beauty.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The incident passed over, they made an early departure, and Martin forgot all about it, though for the moment he had been puzzled that any woman, even of the working class, should not have been flattered and delighted by having poetry written about her.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

So Martin thought, and he thought further, till it dawned upon him that the difference between these lawyers, officers, business men, and bank cashiers he had met and the members of the working class he had known was on a par with the difference in the food they ate, clothes they wore, neighborhoods in which they lived.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Now that Martin was aroused in such matters, he swiftly noted the difference between the baggy knees of the trousers worn by the working class and the straight line from knee to foot of those worn by the men above the working class.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)