Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. the poorest class of people in a given society
WordNet
adj. belonging to the lowest and least privileged social stratum; "underclass mothers and children" [syn: underclass(a)]
Wikipedia
The underclass is the segment of the population that occupies the lowest possible position in a class hierarchy, below the core body of the working class.
The general idea that a class system includes a population under the working class has a long tradition in the social sciences (for example, lumpenproletariat). However, the specific term, underclass, was popularized during the last half of the 20th century, first by social scientists of American poverty, and then by American journalists.
The underclass concept has been a point of controversy among social scientists. Definitions and explanations of the underclass, as well as proposed solutions for managing or fixing the underclass problem have been highly debated. The appropriateness of using the underclass term has also been questioned, with some social scientists claiming that the concept has been transformed into a codeword for intellectuals to demonize impoverished Blacks and Latinos in the Urban United States (U.S.).
Usage examples of "underclass".
Of course, Doisy-Dyan was a real tropic hellhole with a huge underclass, where constant killing by Liberators and Regulators kept a high level of tension in the hot, humid air.
In many ways, rads were polar opposites to Perkinites, pushing for empowerment of the var underclass through restructuring all of the rules, political and biological.
Somebody falling down from salaryman level is going to have a hard time getting anywhere, when there are so many ahead of him in the underclass who have clean records.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to offer the feelies to the underclass.
Arts 1, FedFacts, NetSearch, NetTeach, NetAgent, and MultiMail put the basic elements of interactivity in the living rooms of the two flavors of underclass that had resisted eradication - one economic, the other intellectual.
She knew perfectly well why Cad Mandy Rocher had pulled off his overrobe slowly, stretching, before the underclass wrestling matches.
Maybe that was why it was almost always the underclasses, the women, the people of color, the gay people, the ones who were already stigmatized as being vulnerable, available, trapped by the body, who took the risk of the wire.
He suppressed the suppressible underclass and dicked the disenfranchised as dickable Dick Contino surrogates.
Cities needed to be supplied from the country, and cities attracted those people disillusioned with subsistence farming, simply down and out, or those looking for the end of the rainbow, and if a sufficient number came in and a poor underclass developed, there was potential for political ferment, violence, and challenges to the system.
The fact that most of this day's bloody violence sprang not from the GLF's separatist ambitions but from the festering, long-standing, and fully justified resentment of the politically excluded underclass wasn't something he was prepared to face, and from where Palacios stood, it seemed obvious he was losing his grip .
Born into the Martian underclass, kept in serflike conditions by the taltor nobility, Klooroo could not have had a very happy time of it.
The night-club owners, the croupiers, the swimming-pool servicers, the golf pros, the tennis coaches, the vendeuses, the call-girls: it was a huge and useful underclass.