the great unwashed

1. 1.

   the common people generally

   “separate the warriors from the mass”

   “power to the people”

   Synonymsmultitudemassesmasshoi polloipeople

   Broadergroup

   Narrowerlaityaudiencefollowing

Questions about the great unwashed

What does the great unwashed mean?

the great unwashed means "the common people generally".

What is another word for the great unwashed?

Close synonyms include multitude, masses, mass, hoi polloi, people. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is the great unwashed a common word?

the great unwashed is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.