lower orders
1
7.0
- noun
- Literature
:
clases bajas
- Many politicians ignore the needs of the lower orders, focusing instead on the wealthy.
Examples
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In times of economic hardship, the lower orders often face the greatest challenges to survive.
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The lower orders within the trade deficit country have a very bad time of it in general.
Blog text (16) -
But you seem to have a weakness for the lower orders that I find disturbing.
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They must be associated with the lower orders.
Fiction book (1994) -
Radical Republicans proclaimed that if the lower orders tended to be felled by cholera, it was the result of their centuries-long physical, economic, and moral abuse by the dominant classes.
Academic text (2001) -
The conservatives' association of the "cholera-prone" lower orders with social and political turmoil even prompted some to announce that "cholera is transmitted by means of a revolutionary infection which proceeds exactly like the disease, erupting with no specific reason."
Academic text (2001) -
This was regarded as a disaster by Yale, Harvard, and the other white-shoe upper middle-class law schools—not only were these schools letting in the lower orders to the law, but they were often graduating better lawyers.
Blog text (5) -
The report highlighted how the lower orders struggle to access basic services in society.
Synonyms
36
3.3
People who have little money or few chances
19
5.5
A group of people at the bottom of society who are poor and have few chances to improve their lives
14
2.7
People with little money, education, or power in society
4
9.0
People in a society who are not rich or powerful
4
5.9
A person who has lower rank or status than others
A social group seen as the lowest class that provides work to support others
Antonyms
How Privileged
258
4.7
15
3.4
516
2.0
69
2.8
- Literature
1
7.0
- Specialized
19
5.5
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase combines 'lower' (indicating inferior rank) with 'orders' (groups or ranks), so the overall sense 'people of lower social/economic rank' is partly derivable from the constituents. However, the noun 'order' here carries a specialized/older sense of social rank (not the given definition of 'stable condition/obedience'), so a B1 learner who only knows the basic meaning of 'order' may not fully predict the social-class sense without exposure.
Etymology
Lower orders comes from an old image of society as steps of rank: an order was a social rank or group, and those on the lower steps were the lower orders. So the phrase now means 'the people in the lower social or economic classes'.