WORKING-CLASS

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does working-class mean? 

• WORKING-CLASS (adjective)
  The adjective WORKING-CLASS has 2 senses:

1. of those who work for wages especially manual or industrial laborers

2. working for hourly wages rather than fixed (e.g. annual) salaries

  Familiarity information: WORKING-CLASS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WORKING-CLASS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Of those who work for wages especially manual or industrial laborers

Synonyms:

blue-collar; propertyless; wage-earning; working-class

Context example:

party of the propertyless proletariat

Similar:

low-class; lower-class (occupying the lowest socioeconomic position in a society)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Working for hourly wages rather than fixed (e.g. annual) salaries

Synonyms:

wage-earning; working-class

Context example:

working-class occupations include manual as well as industrial labor

Similar:

blue-collar (of or designating manual industrial work or workers)

 Context examples 

You have no working-class nor criminal practice.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Further, and keenest of all, she read into the incident the impossibility of his living down his working-class origin.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Then by what right did Martin Eden emerge, as he had so recently emerged, from his rag-time and working-class songs, and pass judgment on the world's music?

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

It was not true business principle to allow credit to a strong-bodied young fellow of the working-class who was too lazy to work.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

His nature opened to music as a flower to the sun, and the transition was quick from his working-class rag-time and jingles to her classical display pieces that she knew nearly by heart.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

He had lived all his life in the working-class world, and the camaraderie of labor was second nature with him.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

"Maybe nobody will be there," Brissenden said, when they dismounted and plunged off to the right into the heart of the working-class ghetto, south of Market Street.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The same pressures and caresses, unaccompanied by speech, that were efficacious with the girls of the working-class, were equally efficacious with the girls above the working- class.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

It was the knot of wordy socialists and working-class philosophers that held forth in the City Hall Park on warm afternoons that was responsible for the great discovery.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

At one time in his life he had been just a common hoodlum, the leader of a gang that worried the police and terrorized honest, working-class householders.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)