third estate
- noun
- Archaic
:
tercera clase
- During the French Revolution, the third estate mobilized to demand equal rights and representation in the government.
- member of the third estate
At this time, the Third Estate, the bourgeoisie made-up the big buck of the population in France, but wasn't allowed to vote, CAS wrote.
- At this time, the Third Estate, the bourgeoisie made-up the big buck of the population in France, but wasn't allowed to vote, CAS wrote.
Examples
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They have no intention of sharing power with the Third Estate, the common people, and wish to see the King's absolute power restored.
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Bourgeois Parisians had been keeping pets throughout the eighteenth century, and Mercier's condemnation of dogs in the city was directed as much at well-heeled urban members of the third estate as at the nobility.
Academic text (2015) -
As is what our Third Estate is supposed to provide!
Blog text (12) -
Rather than being personified in the figure of a common sailor, the third estate is represented by a merchant.
Academic text (1990) -
Together with the other Portuguese variant, it coincides with Timoneda in awarding the prize to a member of the third estate.
Academic text (1990) -
At this time, the Third Estate, the bourgeoisie made-up the big buck of the population in France, but wasn't allowed to vote, CAS wrote.
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In this context, it is interesting to note that, in the French tradition, the monk is supposed to be poorer and humbler than the merchant who represents the third estate.
Academic text (1990) -
Read in conjunction with the snuffbox, the lapdog can be seen to represent the nobility, who now depend on and beg from the leading members of the third estate.
Academic text (2015) -
Despite sharing these three details with Timoneda (award of the prize to a member of the third estate, exclusion of a merchant, and identification of the best sight; note that the first two items are also paralleled in Leiria), however, the Azorean story has much more in common with the French tradition.
Academic text (1990) -
Moreover, these paintings depict the human and the animal in scenes of mutual sensation as a form of communication that resulted in intersubjective experiences of knowing the other—not only of the human and the animal but also of the man and the woman, and of the nobility and the third estate.
Academic text (2015)
Synonyms
1
7.2
Ordinary people who are not nobles or rulers
Antonyms
How Privileged
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally built from 'third' (ordinal) + 'estate' (a social class), so learners can infer it denotes the third of a ranked set of social estates. However, identifying that this specifically refers to the common people (as distinct from clergy and nobility) requires historical or cultural knowledge of the three-estates system, so the mapping is not fully predictable from the words alone.
Etymology
Third estate comes from old France, where society was divided into three groups called 'estates'. The word third shows it was the third group and estate meant a social 'class', so the phrase came to mean the 'common people' rather than the nobles or church leaders.