COMMON PEOPLE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does common people mean? 

• COMMON PEOPLE (noun)
  The noun COMMON PEOPLE has 1 sense:

1. people in general (often used in the plural)

  Familiarity information: COMMON PEOPLE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• COMMON PEOPLE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

People in general (often used in the plural)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

common people; folk; folks

Context example:

the common people determine the group character and preserve its customs from one generation to the next

Hypernyms ("common people" is a kind of...):

people ((plural) any group of human beings (men or women or children) collectively)

Meronyms (members of "common people"):

pleb; plebeian (one of the common people)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "common people"):

country people; countryfolk (people raised in or living in a rural environment; rustics)

gentlefolk (people of good family and breeding and high social status)

grass roots (the common people at a local level (as distinguished from the centers of political activity))

home folk (folks from your own home town)

rabble; ragtag; ragtag and bobtail; riffraff (disparaging terms for the common people)

 Context examples 

Here I am noble; I am boyar; the common people know me, and I am master.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

However, now and then they take a whale that happens to be dashed against the rocks, which the common people feed on heartily.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I would have them come forth from their lonely places, mix with the borel folks, feel the pains and the pleasures, the cares and the rewards, the temptings and the stirrings of the common people.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And this invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction with the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues, after the manner of their forefathers; such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)