plebs

noun

ˈplebz  ˈpleps 

plural plebes ˈplē-(ˌ)bēz  ˈplā-ˌbās 

1

: the general populace

2

: the common people of ancient Rome

Synonyms

• commoners
• commons
• crowd
• herd
• hoi polloi
• mass
• millions
• mob
• multitude
• people
• plebeians
• populace
• public
• rank and file

Examples of plebs in a Sentence

the tabloids know that there's more money to be made from the antics of celebs than from the problems of the plebs

Recent Examples on the Web

Two millionaires stay millionaires by asking plebs to fund their children. —Minyvonne Burke, NBC News, 27 Jan. 2024

The intention to illuminate the political machinations of the Capitol and the importance of the games in maintaining the divide between the ruling class and the powerless plebs yields little beyond turgid gloom. —David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 9 Nov. 2023

Climate envoy John Kerry was successfully shamed into selling off his family’s Gulfstream GIV-SP last year and has reportedly switched to joining the plebs on commercial for most journeys. —Kate Aronoff, The New Republic, 2 May 2023

The plebs were Rome's politicians, landowners and citizens. —Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 9 Sep. 2022

Scholars, however, don't entirely agree on what benefits patricians had over the plebs. —Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 9 Sep. 2022

His singing and theatrics and chariot racing offended their sense of decorum, while also garnering adoration of the plebs, threatening the precarious balance of power. —Jonathon Keats, Forbes, 17 June 2021

The plebs’s relative impoverishment in the wake of this would help give rise to an array of demagogues—and eventually the collapse of the Roman republic. —Win McCormack, The New Republic, 11 Feb. 2021

Political and economic elites fear nothing more than the plebs of the world uniting to challenge their rule, which is what sublime solidarity aims to do. —Astra Taylor, The New Republic, 26 Aug. 2019

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from Latin plēbs, earlier plēbēs (5th declension) "the general body of citizens in ancient Rome (as distinct from the patricians), the common people, the masses," probably going back to pre-Italic *plēd^hū, *plēd^hu̯ē-s, going back to Indo-European *pléh₁-d^h-uh₁ (nominative), *pléh₁-d^h-u̯eh₁-s (genitive), whence also Greek plēthȳ́s "great number, multitude, crowd, throng"; a u-stem derivative from Indo-European *pléh₁-d^h-, extended form of the verbal base *pleh₁- "become full" — more at plethora

Note: The assumption is that the -b- in plēbēs is the outcome of *-d^hu̯-. This etymology, first proposed by Brugmann, was elaborated by Holger Pedersen in La cinquième déclinaison latine (Copenhagen, 1926), pp. 63, 71. The characterization of the paradigm has been taken up by—among other authors—P. Schrijver (The Reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European Laryngeals in Latin [Amsterdam, 1991], pp. 380-81) and F. Kortlandt (Baltistica, vol. 32, no. 2 [1997], p. 160). Ernout and Meillet (Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine), while acknowledging that Brugmann and Pedersen's hypothesis is "la seule admissible" among Indo-European etymologies, are nonetheless inclined to see plēbēs as a loanword along with urbs "city" (see urban) and populus "people" (see people entry 1). Outside Latin the etymon of plēbēs is attested in the Oscan inscription tríbuf : plífriks = tribunus plebicus "tribune of the plebs." The adjective plífriks presumably goes back to *plēþriko- "of the people," based on an earlier adjective *pleh₁-d^h-ro-. (See Ignacio-Javier Adiego, "Osco tríbuf : plífriks," Glotta, 77. Band, Heft 1 [2001], pp. 1-6.)

First Known Use

1591, in the meaning defined at sense 1