as in middle class
the class of people who earn money by doing usually physical work and who are not rich or powerful
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as in middle-class
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of working-class
Carly Tagen-Dye, PEOPLE, 14 Oct. 2025
Its quiet streets have drawn a diverse mix of middle- and working-class families.
—Christian Orozco, NBC news, 14 Oct. 2025
The New Yorker, New Yorker, 22 Sep. 2025
And many publicly say Congress should continue some federal subsidies to help working class Americans purchase health plans.
—Claudia Grisales, NPR, 19 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for working-class
Noun
She was touched by how their working-class childhood, raised by their single mother Peggy, was reflected in their personalities.
—Carly Tagen-Dye, PEOPLE, 14 Oct. 2025
Its quiet streets have drawn a diverse mix of middle- and working-class families.
—Christian Orozco, NBC news, 14 Oct. 2025
Adjective
Burney grew up working class in Baltimore, endured his father’s fits of rage, pulled shifts at soul-crushing jobs to support his daughter, and lost sight in one eye from injuries in a car accident.
—The New Yorker, New Yorker, 22 Sep. 2025
And many publicly say Congress should continue some federal subsidies to help working class Americans purchase health plans.
—Claudia Grisales, NPR, 19 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for working-class
Recent Examples of Synonyms for working-class
Noun
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But as the Soviet Union fell and the space race slowed, Sridhar pivoted to providing clean energy technology for the rising global middle class.—
Jordan Blum,
Fortune,
16 Oct. 2025
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His oysterman image is an important part of building his identity as an everyman working an honest job, a friend to the middle class.—
Sam Stone,
Bon Appetit Magazine,
16 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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Completed in 1957 as a private residence and currently owned by the Currier Museum of Art, the home is just one of seven Usonian Automatic houses built by Wright and embodies his ambition to design affordable, high-quality housing for middle-class Americans.—
News Desk,
Artforum,
17 Oct. 2025
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Ephron gives Rachel, the character modeled after herself, a handful of upper middle-class neuroses and places her in group therapy.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
15 Oct. 2025
Noun
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This kind of soft satire also puts me in mind of Dorothy West, who excellently sent up a nascent Black bourgeoisie in novels like The Wedding.—
Brittany Allen
July 10,
Literary Hub,
10 July 2025
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Its leaders sanctioned the mass appropriation of lands from the nobility and their distribution to smaller farmers and the urban bourgeoisie.—
Michael Albertus,
Foreign Affairs,
24 June 2025
Adjective
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But part of Kafka’s drive is something altogether less tangible; art was soon to enter its avant-garde phase in the early 20th century, and the writer turns out to be much more bohemian than his bourgeois upbringing suggests, showing a keen interest in underground Yiddish theater.—
Damon Wise,
Deadline,
25 Sep. 2025
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This is the mystification at the heart of the trinity formula in which bourgeois economics conceives of commodities as resulting from the combination of three factors of production: land, labor, and capital.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
22 Sep. 2025
Adjective
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Porter has been a lead creator before, but that was on cellar-dwelling Houston Rockets squads that became a breeding ground for poor habits.—
Fred Katz,
New York Times,
16 Oct. 2025
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Young people want better governance and are fed up with suffering from poor services and economies while their leaders get rich around them and inequality grows.—
Elizabeth Shackelford,
Twin Cities,
16 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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Caving—which is the more extreme cousin to spelunking—is physically and mentally challenging but also adrenaline fueled and just plain fun, too.—
Heide Brandes,
AFAR Media,
15 Oct. 2025
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And those, including a defense of quarterback Beau Pribula, were plain and worthy on Tuesday in the wake of MU’s first loss of the season last Saturday against Alabama.—
Kansas City Star,
Kansas City Star,
15 Oct. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Working-class.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/working-class. Accessed 19 Oct. 2025.
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