lower orders
The common people
Lower orders is a dated term for the social classes considered beneath the aristocracy and wealthy—the working poor, servants, laborers.
The phrase carries the assumptions of rigid class hierarchy: The lower orders were not expected to dine with their betters.
Now used almost exclusively in historical contexts or with ironic distance.
- massesBulk or populace
- crowdLarge public gathering
- plebeianOrdinary, unrefined person
- commonersOrdinary citizens, untitled
- salt of the earthFundamentally decent, reliable people
mudsill · bottom rung · peasantry · working class · rank and file · serfs · servant class · subordinate · underprivileged · laborers · downtrodden · great unwashed · populace · hoi polloi · proletariat · taxa · phylum · hierarchy
lower ordersupper classes
Society's most privileged strata
nobility · aristocracy · ruling class · gentry · peerage
lower, orders, order, lowest, lowering, lowered, ordered, ordering, orderly