Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Plebeian |
PlebeianAdjective1. Of the common people of ancient Rome; "a plebeian magistrate". 2. Of or associated with the great masses of people; "the common people in those days suffered greatly"; "behavior that branded him as common"; "his square plebeian nose"; "a vulgar and objectionable person"; "the unwashed masses". Noun1. One of the common people. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "plebeian" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1350. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Satire | PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution. Source: Devil's Dictionary. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
In ancient Rome, the plebs was the general body of Roman citizens, distinct from the privileged class of the patricians. A member of the plebs was known as a plebeian.The true origin of the distinction between plebeians and patricians is unknown; there is little evidence for any sort of a racial basis, nor many signs of a distinction during the time of the kings. In any case, around time of the foundation of the Roman Republic, the plebeians were excluded from religious colleges and magistracies, and the law of the Twelve Tables disallowed intermarriage. At the same time, plebeians were enrolled in the gentes and tribes, served in the army, and could become military tribunes.
Even so, the "Conflict of the Orders" over the political status of the plebeians went on for the first two centuries of the republic, ending with the formal equality of plebeians and patricians in 287 BC. The plebeians achieved this by developing their own organizations (the concilia plebis), leaders (the tribunes and plebeian aediles), and as the ultimate weapon used the secessio, by which the plebeians would literally leave Rome, effectively boycotting the city. This is recorded to have happened five times, although only the last (in 287) is believed to be accurately documented.
Later on "plebeian" came to mean the poorer members of society in general. During the Empire it was often used of anyone not in the senatorial or equestrian orders.
The word lives on in "plebe", which is the term for a freshman at the US Military Academy and US Naval Academy.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Plebs."
Synonyms: PlebeianSynonyms: common (adj), unwashed (adj), vulgar (adj), pleb (n). (additional references) |
| Antonyms: patrician (adj), proletarian (adj). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Commonalty | Plebeian, proletarian; of low parentage, of low origin, of low extraction, of mean parentage, of mean origin, of mean extraction; lowborn, baseborn, earthborn; mushroom, dunghill, risen from the ranks; unknown to fame, obscure,plebeian, proletarian; of low parentage, of low origin, of low extraction, of mean parentage, of mean origin, of mean extraction; lowborn, baseborn, earthborn; mushroom, dunghill, risen from the ranks; unknown to fame, obscure, untitled. |
Commoner, one of the people, democrat, plebeian, republican, proletary, proletaire, roturier, Mr. Snooks, bourgeois, epicier, Philistine, grisette, demimonde. | |
Vulgarity | Unkempt. uncombed, untamed, unlicked, unpolished, uncouth; plebeian; incondite; heavy, rude, awkward; homely, homespun, home bred; provincial, countrified, rustic; boorish, clownish; savage, brutish, blackguard, rowdy, snobbish; barbarous, barbaric; Gothic, |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Plebeian |
| English words defined with "plebeian": common ♦ Plebeianism, Plebeianize, Plebification, Plebiscitum ♦ Ruptuary ♦ unwashed ♦ vulgar. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "plebeian": Hawk nor Buzzard. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Plebeian" is also a word in the following language with the English translation in parentheses. Romanian (plebeian). |
| Domain | Title |
Books |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Author | Date | Quotation |
Communist Manifesto | 1848 | Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. (reference) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| "Plebeian" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 93.55% of the time. "Plebeian" is used about 31 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 93.55% | 29 | 64,444 |
| Noun (singular) | 6.45% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Total | 100.00% | 31 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| Hypenated Usage | |
Ending with "plebeian": patrician-plebeian. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
plebeian | 5 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "plebeian"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | plebe, njeri i pagdhendur (bumpkin). (various references) | |
Arabic | مبتذل (banal, common, commonplace, conventional, corny, everyday, fade, fading, hack, hackneyed, outworn, overused, pedestrian, platitudinous, prosaic, prose, routine, slipshod, stale, stereotyped, tacky, threadbare, tired, trite, trivial, vapid, vulgar, well worn, workaday, worn out), سوقي (common, logistic, logistical, scurrilous, vulgar), عامي (base, colloquial, informal, slang, slangy, vernacular, vulgar, yearly), عادي (average, banal, classless, common, commonplace, conventional, household, lay, mean, medial, mediocre, middling, mundane, natural, normal, ordinary, plain, poor, prosaic, run of the mill, second rate, simple, some, stock, trivial, unexceptional, wont), خشن (boorish, bristly, coarse, crude, gross, gruff, ill mannered, impolite, indelicate, jagged, mannerless, rasping, raucous, rough, roughen, rowdy, rude, rugged, rustic, sand, scabrous, scratchy, stiff, surly, tough, toughen, uncivil, uncouth, vulgar), العامي الروماني. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | плебейски (ignoble, vulgar), плебей (pleb, roturier). (various references) | |
Czech | plebejský, plebej, sprostý (crude, dirty, dunghill, foul, foul-mouthed, gross, indecent, larrikin, mean, nasty, obscene, poor, rowdy, scurrilous, squalid, vulgar), nekultivovaný (coarse, low-browed, uncultivated, uneducated, unrefined, vulgar), lidový (folk, popular). (various references) | |
Farsi | توده مردم(.n&.adj)(روم قدیم), طبقه سوم , خشن ورذل (Plebe), خشن (Blatant, Blowsy, Blowzy, Boorish, Brutish, Churlish, Coarse, Crusty, Gruff, Harsh, High, Hoarse, Impolite, Indelicate, Knockkneed, Ragged, Random, Rough, Rowdy, Rude, Scraggy, Truculent, Ungracious, Unkempt, Unmannered, Unmennerly, Wooden), دانشجوی سال اول نیروی دریاءی (Plebe), بی ادب (Barbaric, Brusque, Coarse, Discourteous, Impolite, Indecorous, Irrespective, Irreverent, Lowbrow, Lowly, Uncivil, Uncivilized, Unmannered, Unmennerly). (various references) | |
French | plébéien. (various references) | |
German | proletenhaft (plebby), plebejisch (common, plebby), plebejer (pleb). (various references) | |
Greek | πληβείοσ. (various references) | |
Hebrew | פלבי, ""יוט (common folk, fool, ignoramus, laic, lay, layman). (various references) | |
Hungarian | plebejus (client), köznépből való, közönséges (base, coarse, common, commonplace, dismal, garden-variety, normal, ordinary, pig, scummy, scurvied, trite, vulgar, wonted), alantas (base, earthbound, inferior, low, menial, pokey, small minded, sub, subordinate, underling). (various references) | |
Italian | plebeo. (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 平民 (commoner). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | へいみ" (commoner). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ebeianplay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | plebeu (commoner, ignoble, vulgar, vulgarian). (various references) | |
Romanian | plebeu, plebeian, de plebeu. (various references) | |
Russian | плебейский, плебей плебейский. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | plebejski, plebejac. (various references) | |
Spanish | plebeyo (commoner, pleb, plebian). (various references) | |
Swedish | plebejisk, plebej, underklassig (lower class), simpel (base, common, ignoble, low, menial, plain, simple, sordid, straightforward, vulgar). (various references) | |
Turkish | plep, halk tabakasından kimse, halk tabakasına özgü, bayağı (banal, camp, cheap, coarse, coarse grained, common, common as dirt, commonplace, corrupt, dastardly, debased, goodish, inferior, lewd, little, low camp, low class, no class, ordinary, pretty, prosaic, quite, rather, run-off-the-mill, shoddy, tawdry, tolerably, vulgar). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | грубий (abrupt, artless, barbaresque, barbaric, base, bearish, boarish, broad, brusque, brute, caddish, chuffy, churlish, clownish, clumsy, coarse, coarse grained, crass, crude, gross, hard boiled, homely, ill bred, knockabout, offhand, primitive, ribald, rough, rough spoken, rude, scratchy, shaggy, surly, swinish, truculent, uncouth), плебейський (rascal, vulgar), плебей (pleb, plebs). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | thô lỗ (beastly, ill-mannered, indelicate, loutish, snippety, snippy, underbred, ungentle), người thuộc tầng lớp nghèo (pleb), hạ lưu tầm thường, bình dân, đê tiện (abject, contemptible, hangdog, ignoble, ignominious, lousily, scabbily, scabby, scaly, scurvy, servile, shabby, small). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "plebeian": plebeianism, plebeianisms, plebeianly, plebeians. (additional references) | |
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"Plebeian" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: plebean, plebeia, plebein, plebiean, plebien, pleblian, pleebian, pleibeian, plesbeian, Ploceinae. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "plebeian" (pronounced plubē"un) |
| 3 | -ē" u n | cyclopean, Eon, epicurean, paean, peon, protean. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-b-e-e-i-l-n-p" | |
-1 letter: biplane, elapine. | |
-2 letters: alpine, bailee, baleen, beanie, beleap, enable, penial, penile, pineal. | |
-3 letters: abele, alien, aline, anele, anile, belie, binal, blain, bleep, elain, lapin, leben, liane, panel, penal, pibal, pilea, plain, plane, plebe, plena. | |
-4 letters: able, alee, anil, bail, bale, bane, bani, bean, been, beep, bene, bile, bine, blae, blin, blip, elan, ilea, lain. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-b-e-e-i-l-n-p" | |
+1 letter: beleaping, plebeians. | |
+2 letters: expansible, inexpiable, inoperable, plebeianly. | |
+3 letters: dispensable, explainable, impregnable, inescapable, inseparable, insuperable, pensionable, plebeianism, pliableness. | |
+4 letters: impenetrable, impenetrably, imponderable, inappeasable, inexplicable, inexpugnable, inseparables, pitiableness, plebeianisms, speedballing. | |
+5 letters: apprehensible, apprehensibly, cerebrospinal, dependability, exceptionable, exceptionably, expendability, imponderables, inappreciable, incapableness, indispensable, inexplainable, interoperable, interpretable, nonperishable, openabilities, paleobotanies, penetrability, plausibleness, pliablenesses, polybutadiene, replenishable, republicanize, unexplainable, unimpeachable, unpredictable, unspecifiable. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Quotations: Historic 6. Usage Frequency 7. Expressions 8. Expressions: Internet | 9. Translations: Modern 10. Derivations 11. Rhymes 12. Anagrams | 13. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
