peasants

noun

plural of peasant
as in clowns
a person of low social status Those snobs treat anyone who lives on the "wrong" side of town like an insignificant peasant.

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of peasants Its artworks, like Michelangelo's Pieta, have been known to make peasants and popes weep. — Chris Livesay, CBS News, 5 Apr. 2026 The peasants looked different, weathered. — Michael Sheridan, Vanity Fair, 8 Apr. 2026 The painting shows a lush, verdant Italian landscape, whose richness allows even peasants to enjoy leisurely strolls along its paths. — Tyler Green, The Atlantic, 21 May 2026 Karelian bear dogs were originally used by Finnish and Russian peasants as watch dogs and for hunting, according to the American Kennel Club. — Natalie Krebs, Outdoor Life, 17 June 2026 In the early nineteenth century, after Egyptian peasants happened upon ancient fragments, archaeologists began to look in such places for pieces of manuscript, which could vary in size from a few letters to a slice of text. — Madeleine Schwartz, The New York Review of Books, 6 June 2026 His paternal grandparents were peasants in Transylvania; his maternal grandparents were also peasants, and his grandmother was illiterate. — Rebecca Mead, New Yorker, 13 Apr. 2026 And that was to inspire, raise, and command armies of European Christians, including kings, commoners and peasants, to invade the Holy Land and free it from Muslim occupation. — Peter Lucas, Boston Herald, 18 Apr. 2026 Müntzer’s teachings helped provoke the widespread uprising of the German peasants in 1525, and have served as a kind of progenitor inspiration for later communist thinkers, from Friedrich Engels to Ernst Bloch. — Literary Hub, 25 Mar. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for peasants
  1. clowns
  2. provincials
  3. mountaineers
Noun
  • Hang out with sheep, meet magicians and clowns and explore the amusement park.
    — Cole Premo, CBS News, 29 June 2026
  • The only leaders more buffoonish and lethal than the fairground hucksters elected in our failing democracies are the omnipotent clowns of tyranny.
    — Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Atlantic, 28 June 2026
Definition of clowns
Noun
  • Marlowe, the son of a poor Canterbury cobbler, and Shakespeare, the son of a Stratford glover and alderman, were both unlikely artistic geniuses, provincials in a nation in which social class was rigidly fixed.
    — Heller McAlpin, Christian Science Monitor, 10 Sep. 2025
Definition of provincials
Noun
  • Only, perhaps, a constitutional aversion to thinking ill of mountaineers.
    — William Finnegan, New Yorker, 29 June 2026
  • Built in 1879 by enterprising townsfolk, the Zermatterhof has been welcoming royalty, celebrities, and intrepid mountaineers for nearly a century and a half.
    — Alexandra Emanuelli, Travel + Leisure, 28 June 2026
Definition of mountaineers

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peasantry
peasants
pebbly
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Cite this Entry

“Peasants.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/peasants. Accessed 7 Jul. 2026.

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More from Merriam-Webster on peasants

Nglish: Translation of peasants for Spanish Speakers

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