below-stairs

Prepositional phrase

1. (dated) On a floor lower than the one a speaker currently occupies; below the main floor of a multi-floor building.
   • I’le lock her into her Sister’s Room below Stairs, for to night, there’s no Balcony there.1691, Thomas D’Urfey, Love for Money, or, The Boarding School, London: J. Hindmarsh and Abel Roper, act V, scene 1, page 45

   Synonyms:

   downstairs

   Antonyms:

   above stairs, upstairs

2. (UK, historical) In or pertaining to the lowest levels of a large house where the house staff work and are accommodated, contrasted with above stairs where the owning family reside.
   • a. 1631, John Donne, letter to H. Goodere, in Letters to Severall Persons of Honour written by John Donne, London: Richard Marriot, 1651, pp. 158-159,
     My daughter Constance is at this time with me; or the emptinesse of the town, hath made me, who otherwise live upon the almes of others, a...
3. (broadly) Common, vulgar.
   • Unless we wanted dear Simkins, given he is loyalty personified, the Queen Mother used to die of jealousy, to do the below stairs POV that "pleb" would be considered positively affectionate & unquestionably better than prole & actually a great improvement on Simkins?2012 September 25, Catherine Bennett, “Mrs Cameron's diary: more trouble with the plebs”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
4. (UK, historical) The areas of a large house in which house staff work, or the staff that work there.