the social

noun

British, somewhat informal

: money provided by a government program to people who are unable to work because they are old, disabled, or unemployed

He's living on the social now.

Examples of the social in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The lawsuit accuses the social media giant of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features that get children addicted to its platforms. — ABC News, 17 Aug. 2026

Bukayo Saka even referred to the social media storm that was caused by those images in interviews following Arsenal’s league title victory a month later. — Nnamdi Onyeagwara, New York Times, 16 Aug. 2026

For Cusk, freedom involves wriggling out of the social and historical integuments that enclose a person into a bounded self. — Becca Rothfeld, New Yorker, 16 Aug. 2026

Just as with the Romans, we peasants are treated to a spectacle to distract us from the reality of the abject impoverishment of the social safety net and the abandonment of the poor. — Chicago Tribune, 15 Aug. 2026

Rhymes for the social

• asocial
• prosocial
• unsocial
• antisocial
• biosocial
• homosocial
• psychosocial
• biopsychosocial