Noun

(en noun)

One of the aristocracy, nobility, or people of rank in a community; one of a ruling class; a noble (originally in Revolutionary France).

A proponent of aristocracy; an advocate of aristocratic government.

* 1974 : (2nd edition, revised; Penguin Classics; ISBN 0140440488), Translator’s Introduction, pages 51 and 53:

Professor Fite, in The Platonic Legend , deprecates earlier idealization, and finds Plato to be an aristocrat , something of a snob, and the advocate of a restrictively organized society.

Plato was, as has so often been observed, temperamentally an aristocrat . And he believed that the qualities needed in his rulers were, in general, hereditary, and that given knowledge and opportunity you could deliberately breed for them.

Noun

The working class or lower class.

* {{quote-book

, page=173 , year=1906 , author=Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , title=Manifesto of the Communist Party citation , passage="Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie to day the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class."}}

The wage earners collectively, excluding salaried workers.

(history) In ancient Rome, the lowest class of citizens, who had no property.