Lumpen

Word of the Day for Wednesday March 23, 2005

lumpen \LUHM-puhn; LUM-puhn\, adjective:
1. Of or relating to dispossessed and displaced individuals, especially those who have lost social status.
2. Common; vulgar.

noun; plural lumpen, also lumpens:
A member the underclass, especially the lowest social stratum.

. . . an academic sweatshop where underpaid lumpen intellectuals slave for a pittance.
--Ashlea Ebeling, "I got my degree through e-mail," Forbes, June 16, 1997

If traditionally cricket has been the game of the elite, and football strictly for the lumpen masses, all that's changed now.
--Louisa Buck, "Fever pitch," ArtForum, October 1996

Though I appreciate that Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is a self-made man, having made his billions by selling the voltage of his brainpower to behemoths such as CompuServe and Yahoo!, and though I also appreciate that he has maintained his ability to mingle with the lumpen, he still is a very, very rich man.
--Sean Deveney, "Mavs make their move, but at what cost?" Sporting News, March 4, 2002

The New Russians are depicted as lumpens who have left the countryside and never fully adjusted to city life.
--Emil Draitser, "The new Russians' jokelore: Genesis and sociological interpretations," Demokratizatsiya, Summer 2001


Lumpen is from German Lumpenproletariat, "degraded stratum of the proletariat," from Lump, "a contemptible person" (from Lumpen, "rags") + Proletariat, "proletariat," from French.
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The ordinary, the common, ending with the dispossessed