roturier

roturier

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French 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. [from 16th c.]
   • 1792, Charlotte Smith, Desmond, Broadview 2001, p. 128:

     ‘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 independent industry.’

   • 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 1849–1850, OCLC 2057953:

     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 lovely girls to his sons, as affably as your commonest roturier would do.

   • 1945, Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy:

     He cannot forgive Socrates for his humble origin; he calls him a "roturier," and accuses him of corrupting the noble Athenian youth with a democratic moral bias.

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French

Etymology

From roture +‎ -ier. Compare Medieval Latin rupturārius.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

roturier (feminine roturière, masculine plural roturiers, feminine plural roturières)

1. common; not noble

Noun

roturier m (plural roturiers, feminine roturière)

1. commoner

Related terms

• roture

Further reading

• “roturier”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.