proletarian
noun · adjective
Simple meaning
A member of the working class.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
prohluhtehreeuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
pɹoʊləˈtɛɹiən
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A member of the working class (not necessarily employed)
A member of the proletariat.
adjective
Of or relating to the proletariat.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A member of the working class (not necessarily employed)
Used this way, proletarian is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- prole , more casual, better suited to speech than writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A radical reform in China initiated by Mao Zedong in 1965 and carried out largely by the Red Guard.
An urban hit squad and guerrilla group of the Communist Party in the Philippines.
A clandestine group of leftist extremists who oppose Italy's labor policies and foreign policy.
A clandestine group of leftist extremists who oppose Italy's labor policies and foreign policy.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Antonyms
Sense: member of the working class (not necessarily employed)
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.