Definition of "proletary" []

• A proletarian. (noun)

Wiktionary.org : Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

• "At the dawn of an October day in 1827 a young fellow about sixteen years of age, whose clothing proclaimed what modern phraseology so insolently calls a proletary, was standing in a small square of Lower"
• "Of the latter I shall have better occasion to speak when we come to our provincial orbs; the former divided the whole people by tribes, amounting, as Livy and Cicero show, at their full growth to thirty-five, and every tribe by the sense or valuation of estates into five classes: for the sixth being proletary, that is the nursery, or such as through their poverty contributed nothing to the commonwealth but children, was not reckoned nor used in arms."
• "For a proletary (non-taxpayer whose fortune is rated at less than a freeholder's) any one who shall be willing shall be surety (_vindex_)."