lower middle classn.adj.

1831 Globe (Washington, D.C.) 1 Aug. I have lately..conversed a great deal with the master tradesmen and others of the lower middle class.

1852 H. Martineau Let. 7 Apr. in R. K. Webb H. Martineau (1960) x. 301 Thinking men & women of the lower middle, & working classes.

1861 J. S. Mill Represent. Govt. iii. 67 A benefit of the same kind..is produced on Englishmen of the lower middle class by their liability to be placed on juries and to serve parish offices.

1908 E. M. Forster Room with View ix. 158 Cecil..replied that the physique of the lower middle classes was improving at a most appalling rate.

1963 J. Blondel Voters, Parties, & Leaders v. 136 Labour candidates are mainly drawn from the middle and lower middle classes.

2004 N.Y. Times (National ed.) 4 Apr. i. 16/1 They have no job security at all, and they want to keep their toehold in the lower middle class.

1835 Monthly Repos. May 348 The pamphlets, under these names, from the pen of Lord Brougham, who sustains in the one the character of an upper middle-class man, and in the other that of a lower middle-class man.

1881 Lady Monkswell Diary 26 Apr. in E. C. F. Collier Victorian Diarist (1944) 52 Presently an old lady, rather ‘lower middle class’, with grey hair & no cap, appeared and welcomed us.

1957 New Yorker 12 Jan. 25/1 For Nora, who came from a poor and an ugly lower-middle-class home, political action was a leg up.

1972 A. Davidson tr. A. Moravia Two of Us i. 10 I was struck by his language, half courtly, half bureaucratic and, in any case, lower middle-class.

2010 Independent on Sunday 14 Mar. 44/2 These materially aspirant middle classes are anxious to assert that they are no longer ‘povvoes’ or lower middle class, but prosperous consumers.