unwashed

The broader general public, especially those of the lower and lower-middle classes. The film didn't cause too great a stir with the unwashed masses, but it has been considered a milestone in cinematic achievement among film critics. The world of the super-rich is one that we among the unwashed masses can't even begin to understand.

Fig. the general public; the lower middle class. The Simpsons had a tall iron fence around their mansion—put there to discourage the great unwashed from wandering up to the door by mistake, I suppose. Maw says the great unwashed don't know enough to come in out of the rain.

A disparaging term for the common man. The phrase first appeared in an 1830 novel, Paul Clifford, by the British novelist and playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton: “He is certainly a man who bathes and ‘lives cleanly,' (two especial charges preferred against him by Messrs. the Great Unwashed).” Among other cynics (although they would call themselves realists) who used the phrase was H. L. Mencken, who also referred to the majority of Americans as the “booboisie.”