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

By the 1980s, however, many of the area’s mines and factories had closed and the slow withdrawal of the industries that built the place left Wrexham facing the same post-industrial fate that had decimated blue-collar communities all over the world. —Los Angeles Times, 12 May 2026

At this gleefully un-sleek restaurant styled as a Korean blue-collar cabby spot, the menu has almost no choices and not all the banchan are created equal. —Ligaya Mishan, New York Times, 11 May 2026

Still others live in a two-parent household and happily opted to attend vocational school, join the military, go to community college, work a blue-collar job or maybe bag groceries at a local big box store post-high school. —Essence, 11 May 2026

Colleagues describe Urban as having a blue-collar ethos, caring more about doing the job right than the usual status indicators of Hollywood, like who is top of the callsheet. —Aaron Couch, HollywoodReporter, 8 May 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