lower depths
Society's forgotten underclass
The lower depths are society's most wretched circumstances—extreme poverty, degradation, and despair.
The phrase evokes slums, prisons, and the lives of people cast out from respectable society: a novel set in the lower depths of Victorian London.
It derives from Maxim Gorky's 1902 play about inhabitants of a Russian flophouse.
- nadirLowest possible point
- rock bottomLowest possible level
- descentDownward slope or lineage
- povertySevere lack of resources
- despairTotal absence of hope
grinding poverty · abyss · underclass · bottom rung · marginalization · purgatory · hopelessness · exploitation · lost souls · underworld · down and out · chasm · inferno · destitution · cavern · disenfranchisement · pit · depression
- bottombottom line, bottom rung, underside, underneath, beneath
lower depthsupper crust
Social elite class
high society · aristocracy · elite · ruling class · nobility
lower depthssummit
Peak or diplomatic gathering
heights · pinnacle · apex · upper reaches · zenith
lower depthshigher plane
Superior level of being
spiritual elevation · virtue · grace · righteousness · heaven
lower, depths, depth, lows, lowed, lowing, lowness, lowering, lowest