RABBLE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does rabble mean? 

• RABBLE (noun)
  The noun RABBLE has 2 senses:

1. a disorderly crowd of people

2. disparaging terms for the common people

  Familiarity information: RABBLE used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• RABBLE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A disorderly crowd of people

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

mob; rabble; rout

Hypernyms ("rabble" is a kind of...):

crowd (a large number of things or people considered together)

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

lynch mob (a mob that kills a person for some presumed offense without legal authority)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Disparaging terms for the common people

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

rabble; ragtag; ragtag and bobtail; riffraff

Hypernyms ("rabble" is a kind of...):

common people; folk; folks (people in general (often used in the plural))

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

scum; trash (worthless people)

 Context examples 

Be the cause what it may, it was the end of the Gloria Scott and of the rabble who held command of her.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

At our landing, the captain forced me to cover myself with his cloak, to prevent the rabble from crowding about me.

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

But just as the wedding was going to be solemnized, old Mr Fox stirred under the bench, and cudgelled all the rabble, and drove them and Mrs Fox out of the house.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

The hundreds of thousands read him and acclaimed him with the same brute non-understanding with which they had flung themselves on Brissenden's Ephemera and torn it to pieces—a wolf-rabble that fawned on him instead of fanging him.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

That my health was much impaired, by the continual drudgery of entertaining the rabble every hour of the day; and that, if my master had not thought my life in danger, her majesty would not have got so cheap a bargain.

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

After about two hours the court retired, and I was left with a strong guard, to prevent the impertinence, and probably the malice of the rabble, who were very impatient to crowd about me as near as they durst; and some of them had the impudence to shoot their arrows at me, as I sat on the ground by the door of my house, whereof one very narrowly missed my left eye.

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

The poor girl was almost distracted: that quarter of the palace was all in an uproar; the servants ran for ladders; the monkey was seen by hundreds in the court, sitting upon the ridge of a building, holding me like a baby in one of his forepaws, and feeding me with the other, by cramming into my mouth some victuals he had squeezed out of the bag on one side of his chaps, and patting me when I would not eat; whereat many of the rabble below could not forbear laughing; neither do I think they justly ought to be blamed, for, without question, the sight was ridiculous enough to every body but myself.

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