common folk
Ordinary everyday citizens
Common folk refers to ordinary people—those without wealth, high status, or special distinction.
The phrase carries a slightly nostalgic or folksy tone, evoking rural communities or working-class solidarity: He never forgot his roots among the common folk.
Politicians often invoke common folk to signal populist sympathies, though the phrase can sound patronizing from the privileged.
- working classManual laborers collectively
- laborersWorkers doing physical tasks
- plebeiansRoman lower classes
- yeomenMinor landholders or guards
- everymanOrdinary representative person
everyday people · proletariat · townsfolk · artisans · peasants · tradespeople · blue-collar workers · working stiff · rank and file · commoners · salt of the earth · hoi polloi · layperson · villagers · rustics · farmers · the masses · grassroots
- populacethe masses, ordinary people, general public, hoi polloi, everyman
- commonerscommoner, commoners, peasant, peasants, serfs
- massmass, masses, bulk, body mass, atomic mass
- peasantryserfs, tenant farmers, villagers, laborers, farmhands
- rural folkpeasantry, countryfolk, farmers, farmhands, farm workers
- class revoltrevolutionary, revolt, uprising, rebel, insurgent
common folkaristocracy
Rule by hereditary elite
nobility · the elite · upper class · royalty · gentry
common folkcelebrities
Well-known public figures
VIPs · luminaries · notables · public figures · stars
common folkthe powers that be
Those holding institutional authority
rulers · power brokers · oligarchs · potentates · sovereigns