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rabble

   Also found in: Encyclopedia, Wikipedia 0.03 sec.
rab·ble 1  (rbl)
n.
1. A tumultuous crowd; a mob.
2. The lowest or coarsest class of people. Often used with the.
3. A group of persons regarded with contempt: "After subsisting on the invisible margins of the art scene ... he was 'discovered' in the mid-80's, along with a crowd of like-minded rabble from the East Village" Richard B. Woodward.

[Middle English.]

rabble
Noun
1. a disorderly crowd of noisy people
2. the rabble Contemptuous the common people [origin unknown]

Rabble a pack, string, or swarm of animals or insects; a crowd or array of disorderly people, 1513; the low or disorderly part of the populace; a disorderly collection; a confused medley.
Examples: rabble of appetites, passions and opinions, 1768; of bees; of books, 1803; of butterflies; of ceremonies, 1562; of licentious deities, 1741; of discourse, 1656; of dishes; of flies, 1847; of friars, 1560; of gnats; of insects; of monks, 1560; of murderers, 1792; of opinions, 1768; of passions, 1861; of people, 1635; of mean and light persons, 1568; of pictures, 1581; of scholastic precepts, 1589; of priests, 1529; of readers, 1691; of reasons, 1641; of remedies, 1633; of schoolmen, 1671; of strangers, 1840; of uncommanded traditions, 1545; of womenhood, 1847; of words, 1388.
ThesaurusLegend:  Synonyms Related Words Antonyms
Noun1.rabblerabble - a disorderly crowd of people
crowd - a large number of things or people considered together; "a crowd of insects assembled around the flowers"
lynch mob - a mob that kills a person for some presumed offense without legal authority
2.rabble - disparaging terms for the common people
common people, folk, folks - people in general (often used in the plural); "they're just country folk"; "folks around here drink moonshine"; "the common people determine the group character and preserve its customs from one generation to the next"
scum, trash - worthless people

rabble
noun 2. (Contemptuous) commoners, proletariat, common people, riffraff, crowd, masses, trash chiefly U.S., Canad. scum, lower classes, populace, peasantry, dregs, hoi polloi, the great unwashed (derogatory) canaille, lumpenproletariat, commonalty << OPPOSITE upper classes
Translations
Spanish rabble [ˈræbl] n (pej) → chusma, populacho
French rabble [ˈræbl] n (pej) → populace f
German rabble [ˈræbl] (pej) nPöbel m
Italian rabble [ˈræbl] n (pej) → canaglia, plebaglia

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Life is a well of delight; but where the rabble also drink, there all fountains are poisoned.
Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks, so able as to render their superior numbers and strength too much even for the wisdom of the Circles.
"Up there is the rabble of the wood, continued she, pointing to several laths which were fastened before a hole high up in the wall; "that's the rabble; they would all fly away immediately, if they were not well fastened in.
 
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