WordWealth: plebeian

ple·be·ian , adj.

1. belonging or pertaining to the common people. 2. of, pertaining to, or belonging to the ancient Roman plebs. 3. common, commonplace, or vulgar: a plebeian joke.

4. a member of the common people. 5. a member of the ancient Roman plebs.

[1525–35; < L plēbēi(us) of the plebs (plēbē(s) PLEBS + -ius adj. suffix) + -AN]

—ple·beian·ism, n.

—ple·beian·ly, adv.

—ple·beian·ness, n.

—Syn.3. lowbrow, low, ordinary, popular. (Random House Webster's Unabridged). Look at Thesaurus

He was unashamed of his plebeian roots but keen to provide himself with aristocratic forebears. —— Graham Robb, Victor Hugo

During the Soviet era, anyone of any ethnic background who did the dirty deeds demanded of them to get ahead was rewarded with a crummy but better-than-average apartment, a steady supply of cheap sausage and low-grade vodka, and a host of other plebeian amenities too dull to talk about here. Certain peoples, to be sure, were suspect and hounded mercilessly -- Ukrainians, for example, and often Jews -- but on the whole the Soviet precept regarding national culture prevailed: nationalist in form, socialist in content. In other words, speak your local languages, but use them to sing ever more sonorously your joy at living in the Socialist Paradise. If you don't, be you Evenk or Udmurt, Russian or Khakasian, pack your bag for Siberia. —— Jeffrey Tayler; Russia's Other World; interview by Toby Lester; The Atlantic; March 10, 1999

For cultivated Germans, politics was associated with grasping, greedy, plebeian men, out for their own selfish interests instead of the larger good of the nation. —— Ian Buruma; The Tin Ear; New Republic; Jan 31, 2000

Very generally, American public men before Lincoln had grown up in the environment of slave and free, master and servant, employer and employee, rich and poor, aristocrat and plebeian. How many of them were born and bred aristocrats, trying to interpret democracy to America? But Lincoln grew up in a democracy. The economic equality of his boyhood neighbors would satisfy an advanced social revolutionist to-day. None were rich, and none without food and shelter. If one man worked for another, it was to accumulate a stake, that he might soon become independent. It was not necessary for Abraham Lincoln out of his mind to create a new conception of democracy. —— Arthur E. Morgan; New Light on Lincoln's Boyhood; The Atlantic; Feb 1920

Mr. Evan had been standing before them with a composure which impressed Mrs. Carroll with a belief in his gentle blood, for she remembered her own fussy, plebeian husband, whose fortune had never been able to purchase him the manners of a gentleman. Mr. Evan only grew a little more erect, as he replied, with an untroubled mien,--  —— Louisa May Alcott; Debby's Debut; The Atlantic; August 1863

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