proletarianadj.n.

1652 R. Filmer Obs. Aristotles Politiques 26 The Nobles, and richer men..did bear the chief sway, because all the poorer sort, or proletarian rabble, were clapt into the sixt Classis.

1839 T. De Quincey Dinner in Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. Dec. 815/1 Every citizen, if he were not a mere proletarian animal kept at the public cost, held himself a sort of soldier-elect.

1929 L. Homo Rom. Polit. Institutions ii. iv. 130 For the electors of the lower units—the Fifth Class and the proletarian Century—the vote was not merely of less value, it was non-existent save in theory.

1988 Amer. Jrnl. Philol. 109 580 But what of Caesar's proletarian settlements? Suetonius gives the figure of 80,000 as the number of the urban plebs who were shipped abroad in connection with his reduction of the grain dole.

1663 S. Butler Hudibras: First Pt. i. i. 55 We that are wisely mounted higher..Like Speculators, should foresee.., Portended Mischiefs farther then Low Proletarian Tithing-men.

1676 Doctr. of Devils 96 Much wiser (not only than the Proletarian rabble, but than they too, who profess themselves to be the great Philosophers).

a1734 R. North Examen (1740) i. ii. §155. 117 To have let in the rest of the Proletarian Rout of Villains, that waited without, to be employed as Witnesses.

1797 J. Gifford tr. T. G. de Lally-Tolendal Def. French Emigrants 384 The old and new proprietors..will oppose one immoveable mass to the senseless attacks of the proletarian Jacobins.

1848 Times 23 May 6/2 About 10 o'clock in the evening some parties of labourers..approached the Burg..and were received by the crowd... In fact, there was much more of the proletarian element conspicuous on this occasion than on the three March days.

1851 F. Palgrave Hist. Normandy & Eng. I. 49 The proletarian populace of the great cities.

1871 A. Austin Golden Age 20 He lures the easy, makes the fat his spoil, Pares the lean wage of proletarian toil.

1903 G. B. Shaw Man & Superman v. 196 We have been driven to Proletarian Democracy by the failure of all the alternative systems.

1935 W. Empson Some Versions of Pastoral 3 It is hard for an Englishman to talk definitely about proletarian art.

1975 Chinese Econ. Stud. 8 iv. 3 Countless proletarian heroes have suddenly emerged.

2005 Jerusalem Post (Nexis) 11 May 15 A carry-over from pre-modern times doomed to disappear when the unifying forces of proletarian class consciousness will embrace the workers of the world.

a1657 W. Burton Comm. Antoninus his Itinerary (1658) Ded. 1 The happinesse I enjoy by my Interest in our Nationall Rights (though a poor Proletarian).

1733 W. Oldisworth tr. W. Gozliski Accomplished Senator ii. viii. 319 Among the Romans, the Fathers of a Numerous Issue were always Excused in the Censor's Books, and were afterwards dignified with the Title of Proletarians.

1781 T. Bever Hist. Legal Polity Rom. State i. iii. 28 They..were reserved, principally, for the more peaceable employment of increasing population; from whence they obtained the title of Proletarians.

1838–42 T. Arnold Hist. Rome II. xxxvii. 486 Even the proletarians, or the poorest class of citizens..were now called out and embodied.

1929 L. Homo Rom. Polit. Institutions ii. iv. 131 At the beginning of the second century, the mass of the urban electors were proletarians, for non-proletarian urban electors had their names put on the Rustic Tribes in which they had property.

1972 Jrnl. Rom. Stud. 62 192 He concludes that..all the men in the army were propertied (assidui) while the men not called up..were proletarians.

1841 Times 18 June 11/4 [Translating a toast from French] To the proletarians (operatives), the victims of extortioners, whom the day of equality will soon come to console.

1850 tr. K. Marx & F. Engels Communist Manifesto in Red Republican 23 Nov. 182/1 Does labour under the wages-system create property for the wages-slave, for the Proletarian?

1870 On the War (Internat. Working-Men's Assoc.) 4 Mindful of the watchword of the International Working-men's Association: Proletarians of all countries unite, we shall never forget that the workmen of all countries are our friends and the despots of all countries our enemies.

1940 E. Wilson To Finland Station (1972) ii. ix. 151 With none of the handicaps of the proletarian from the point of view of intellectual training or of general knowledge of the world, he was yet not a middle-class man.

1966 D. Wilson Quarter of Mankind i. 7 The peasant, not the urban proletarian, is the central character in China's drama.

2005 C. Stross Accelerando ii. 65 The central committee denounced computers as bourgeois deviationist pseudoscience intended to dehumanize the proletarian.

1888 S. Moore tr. K. Marx & F. Engels Manifesto Communist Party i. 15 The ‘dangerous class’..that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may..be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution [Ger. proletarische Revolution].

1925 tr. V. Lenin Proletarian Revolution i. 11 Almost a third of this pamphlet..is devoted by this windbag to a twaddle which must be very agreeable to the bourgeoisie, as it..obscures the question of the proletarian revolution.

1977 China Now June 4/1 Tachai is an expression of the proletarian revolution China is in the midst of today (in contrast to the democratic revolution between 1949 and 1966).

2002 P. W. Sperlich Rotten Foundations i. 6 In socialist parlance..Lenin's counter-revolutionary putsch became a proletarian revolution.