roturier

Noun

roturier (plural roturiers)

1. A commoner or plebeian; a person of low rank; especially, in pre-Revolutionary France, a member of the social class comprising all who were not nobles or clergy.
   • ‘This fellow has imbibed all the insolent consequence of those among whom he had lived; and, though roturier himself, conceives, that he derives from the honour of being the idle valet to a nobleman, a right to despise and trample on the honest man who draws his subsistence from the ground by...1792, Charlotte Smith, Desmond, Broadview, published 2001, page 128
   • This fact shows our British independence and honest feeling—our higher orders are not such mere haughty aristocrats as the ignorant represent them: on the contrary, if a man have money they will hold out their hands to him, eat his dinners, dance at his balls, marry his daughters, or give their own...1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 38, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published...