blue-collar

adjective

blue-col·​lar ˈblü-ˈkä-lər 

1

: of, relating to, or constituting the class of wage earners whose duties call for the wearing of work clothes or protective clothing compare white-collar

2

: having characteristics associated with blue-collar workers: such as

a

: having, showing, or appealing to unpretentious or unsophisticated tastes

… a new blue-collar serial … woven around a minor-league baseball team …

—Steven Flax

b

: dependable and hard-working rather than showy or spectacular

a blue-collar athlete

Examples of blue-collar in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Just ten miles from downtown Detroit, residents of the Southend neighborhood of Dearborn, a blue-collar immigrant community with a growing Arab population, were locked in a battle against the city. — Rozina Ali, New Yorker, 21 Aug. 2026

Marlon Andrade, a resident of Embu das Artes, a blue-collar town in the São Paulo metro area, has directed five short films and worked in various roles on three others. — Marcelo Cajueiro, Variety, 20 Aug. 2026

Many Hispanics initially came for blue-collar work, including jobs with the railroads, the Woodruff & Edwards foundry in Elgin and even at a farm that grew mushrooms for Campbell’s Soup in West Chicago. — Mike Danahey, Chicago Tribune, 19 Aug. 2026

In layman’s terms, if white-collar work can all be done without cost by AI, then total output only increases by 19% because blue-collar work becomes a bottleneck. — Bill Conerly, Forbes.com, 18 Aug. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1929, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for blue-collar

• footballer
• installer
• caller
• choler
• collar
• crawler
• dollar
• faller
• haller
• hauler
• holler
• scholar

Kids Definition

blue-collar

adjective

ˈblü-ˈkäl-ər

: of or relating to the class of workers whose duties require work clothes