Virtuous English AcademySociety & Class — C1 English Vocabulary
This C1 vocabulary list gathers 60 advanced English words about society & class — status, structure and social forces. Every word comes with a simple definition, its British-English pronunciation and a natural example sentence, so you learn each one in real context. When you are ready, open the flashcards to practise and remember them for good.
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bourgeoisie/ˌbʊə.ʒwɑːˈziː/
The middle class, especially in business.
“The bourgeoisie grew rich.”
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proletariat/ˌprəʊ.lɪˈteə.ri.ət/
The class of workers who own little.
“The proletariat had no land.”
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gentry/ˈdʒen.tri/
People of high social class below the nobility.
“The local gentry owned estates.”
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stratification/ˌstræt.ɪ.fɪˈkeɪ.ʃən/
The division of society into layers.
“Social stratification is sharp.”
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meritocracy/ˌmer.ɪˈtɒk.rə.si/
A system where people rise by ability.
“They believe in meritocracy.”
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egalitarian/ɪˌɡæl.ɪˈteə.ri.ən/
Believing that everyone is equal.
“It is an egalitarian society.”
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social mobility/ˌsəʊ.ʃəl məʊˈbɪl.ɪ.ti/
The ability to move between social classes.
“Social mobility has stalled.”
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upward/ˈʌp.wəd/
Moving to a higher position or class.
“She made an upward move.”
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downtrodden/ˈdaʊn.trɒd.ən/
Treated badly by those with power.
“The downtrodden had no voice.”
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affluent/ˈæf.lu.ənt/
Having plenty of money.
“They live in an affluent suburb.”
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deprived/dɪˈpraɪvd/
Lacking the things needed for a good life.
“It is a deprived area.”
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disparity/dɪˈspær.ɪ.ti/
A great difference between things.
“Income disparity is widening.”
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polarisation/ˌpəʊ.lər.aɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/
The dividing of people into opposing groups.
“Political polarisation grew.”
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marginalised/ˈmɑː.dʒɪn.əl.aɪzd/
Treated as unimportant and pushed aside.
“Marginalised groups need support.”
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ostracise/ˈɒs.trə.saɪz/
To shut someone out of a group.
“They tried to ostracise him.”
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conformity/kənˈfɔː.mɪ.ti/
Behaving in the way others expect.
“Society demands conformity.”
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nonconformist/ˌnɒn.kənˈfɔː.mɪst/
A person who does not follow common ways.
“She is a proud nonconformist.”
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subjugation/ˌsʌb.dʒəˈɡeɪ.ʃən/
The bringing of people under control.
“Years of subjugation followed.”
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emancipate/ɪˈmæn.sɪ.peɪt/
To set people free from control.
“Reforms aim to emancipate workers.”
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elitism/ɪˈliː.tɪ.zəm/
The belief that a select few should have power.
“He was accused of elitism.”
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privilege/ˈprɪv.əl.ɪdʒ/
A special advantage held by some people.
“It was a sign of privilege.”
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status quo/ˌsteɪ.təs ˈkwəʊ/
The existing state of affairs.
“They defend the status quo.”
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mores/ˈmɔː.reɪz/
The customs and moral rules of a group.
“Social mores change slowly.”
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zeitgeist/ˈzaɪt.ɡaɪst/
The spirit or mood of a particular time.
“The film captured the zeitgeist.”
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demographics/ˌdem.əˈɡræf.ɪks/
Statistics about a population.
“The demographics are shifting.”
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gentrification/ˌdʒen.trɪ.fɪˈkeɪ.ʃən/
The change of a poor area by wealthier people.
“Gentrification pushed out locals.”
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metropolitan/ˌmet.rəˈpɒl.ɪ.tən/
Relating to a large city.
“It is a metropolitan area.”
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parochial/pəˈrəʊ.ki.əl/
Narrow in outlook; concerned with local matters.
“His outlook is parochial.”
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insular/ˈɪn.sjə.lə/
Not open to new or different ideas.
“The village is insular.”
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collective/kəˈlek.tɪv/
Shared by or done by all members of a group.
“They made a collective decision.”
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individualism/ˌɪn.dɪˈvɪdʒ.u.ə.lɪ.zəm/
The belief in the importance of the individual.
“American individualism is famous.”
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fraternity/frəˈtɜː.nɪ.ti/
A group of people with shared interests.
“There is a sense of fraternity.”
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clan/klæn/
A group of families with a common ancestor.
“Loyalty to the clan is strong.”
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tribe/traɪb/
A social group sharing customs and a leader.
“The tribe has ancient customs.”
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caste/kɑːst/
A fixed social class you are born into.
“The caste system shaped society.”
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patriarch/ˈpeɪ.tri.ɑːk/
The male head of a family or group.
“The old patriarch ruled the family.”
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matriarch/ˈmeɪ.tri.ɑːk/
The female head of a family or group.
“The matriarch made all decisions.”
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patriarchy/ˈpeɪ.tri.ɑː.ki/
A society controlled mainly by men.
“Critics attack the patriarchy.”
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feminist/ˈfem.ɪ.nɪst/
A person who supports equal rights for women.
“She is a noted feminist.”
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suffragette/ˌsʌf.rəˈdʒet/
A woman who campaigned for the right to vote.
“The suffragette demanded the vote.”
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emancipated/ɪˈmæn.sɪ.peɪ.tɪd/
Freed from social or political limits.
“Women became more emancipated.”
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underrepresented/ˌʌn.də.rep.rɪˈzen.tɪd/
Not present in fair numbers.
“They are underrepresented in law.”
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cohesive/kəʊˈhiː.sɪv/
United and working well together.
“It is a cohesive community.”
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fragmentation/ˌfræɡ.menˈteɪ.ʃən/
The breaking of something into separate parts.
“Social fragmentation worries leaders.”
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alienation/ˌeɪ.li.əˈneɪ.ʃən/
The feeling of not belonging.
“He felt deep alienation.”
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civic/ˈsɪv.ɪk/
Relating to a city or its citizens.
“She has a strong civic sense.”
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populace/ˈpɒp.jə.ləs/
The ordinary people of a place.
“The populace demanded change.”
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citizenry/ˈsɪt.ɪ.zən.ri/
All the citizens of a place.
“The citizenry turned out to vote.”
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underdog/ˈʌn.də.dɒɡ/
A person expected to lose or with less power.
“Everyone roots for the underdog.”
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nouveau riche/ˌnuː.vəʊ ˈriːʃ/
People who have recently become rich.
“He is dismissed as nouveau riche.”
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aristocrat/ˈær.ɪ.stə.kræt/
A member of the highest social class.
“She married an aristocrat.”
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plutocracy/pluːˈtɒk.rə.si/
Government or control by the wealthy.
“Critics call it a plutocracy.”
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social fabric/ˌsəʊ.ʃəl ˈfæb.rɪk/
The bonds that hold a society together.
“Trust holds the social fabric together.”
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cohort/ˈkəʊ.hɔːt/
A group of people sharing a feature or time.
“A new cohort enrolled.”
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peer pressure/ˈpɪə ˌpreʃ.ə/
Influence from people of your own age.
“Teenagers face peer pressure.”
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ostracism/ˈɒs.trə.sɪ.zəm/
The excluding of a person from a group.
“He feared social ostracism.”
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milieu/ˈmiː.ljɜː/
The social setting in which a person lives.
“She thrived in that milieu.”
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social contract/ˌsəʊ.ʃəl ˈkɒn.trækt/
The agreement of citizens to follow society's rules.
“It breaks the social contract.”
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philanthropist/fɪˈlæn.θrə.pɪst/
A rich person who gives to good causes.
“A philanthropist funded the school.”
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societal/səˈsaɪ.ə.təl/
Relating to society.
“It is a societal problem.”
Using society & class words in English
Class vocabulary is politically loaded, and the words carry the theories that produced them. Bourgeoisie and proletariat are Marxist categories and cannot be used as neutral synonyms for middle and working class. The page also contains a genuinely surprising fact: meritocracy was coined as satire and now means the opposite of what its inventor intended.
What to watch out for
Bourgeoisie and proletariat come with a theory
In Marxist analysis the bourgeoisie owns the means of production and the proletariat sells its labour. Using them simply to mean middle class and working class imports a framework you may not intend, and readers will notice. Both keep French pronunciations and both are collective nouns. The English gentry is different again — landowners ranking just below the nobility.
Meritocracy was invented as a warning
Michael Young coined the word in 1958 for a dystopia in which a new elite justified its privilege by claiming to have earned it. Within a generation the term had been adopted approvingly by the politicians it was meant to criticise, and Young spent his later years objecting. The word is now used almost entirely as praise, which makes its history one of the neatest examples of semantic reversal in English.
Stratification, disparity, polarisation
Stratification is the arrangement of a society into layers, from Latin stratum, whose plural is strata — so a strata is an error. Disparity is a difference that is unfair or striking, not any difference at all: the disparity between the two regions. Polarisation is the movement of a population towards two opposed extremes, and takes the British -isation.
Words learners mix up
Sociological vocabulary distinguishes between being pushed out, being left out and walking away — and between the many kinds of group a person can belong to. Both distinctions are invisible in translation and load-bearing in an essay.
Four ways of being outside the group
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| marginalised | Pushed to the edge of social, economic or political life by structures rather than by any decision. Usually passive and usually of a whole group. | Communities marginalised by every measure of access. |
| ostracise | Deliberately excluded by the people around you. An act with agents, from the Athenian practice of voting a citizen into exile. | He was ostracised by his former colleagues. |
| alienation | The feeling of estrangement from society or from your own work. A subjective state, and a technical term in Marx. | Widespread alienation among younger voters. |
| downtrodden | Oppressed and kept low by those with power. Emotive and slightly literary; describes a condition, not a process. | A novel about the rural downtrodden. |
The useful axis is who is doing it. Marginalised blames structures, ostracise blames identifiable people, and alienation names how it feels from inside — so a person can be marginalised without feeling alienated, and alienated without being ostracised by anyone. Underrepresented is the narrowest and most measurable: present in smaller numbers than the population would predict.
What kind of group is it?
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| clan | A group claiming descent from a common ancestor. Used figuratively and lightly of any tight family network. | The whole clan gathers every August. |
| tribe | A social group with shared ancestry, culture and territory. Now avoided in serious writing about living peoples, where community, people or the group’s own name is preferred. | A study of pre-Roman tribes. |
| caste | A hereditary, ranked division that you cannot leave. Specific to systems of inherited status, above all in South Asia. | Mobility between castes was formally prohibited. |
| cohort | A statistical group sharing a characteristic, usually a birth year or start date. Neutral and technical. | The 1970 cohort has been followed since birth. |
| milieu | The social setting a person moves in. French, uncountable in practice, and about surroundings rather than membership. | She never left the literary milieu of the city. |
Only cohort is genuinely neutral, which is why quantitative research reaches for it. Populace and citizenry are collective terms for a whole population — the second stressing political membership and rights, and both taking a singular verb.
Narrowness, and its opposite
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| parochial | Concerned only with local matters and blind to anything wider. From parish, and always critical. | A parochial debate about a national problem. |
| insular | Closed to outside influence or people. From insula, island, and applied to whole cultures as readily as to individuals. | An insular profession that recruits from itself. |
| conformity | Behaviour matching the group’s expectations. Neutral in psychology, mildly critical in ordinary use. | Pressure towards conformity is strongest in adolescence. |
| elitism | The belief that a select group should hold advantage or authority. Almost always an accusation. | The scheme was attacked as elitism. |
Parochial and insular both mean narrow but differ in direction: parochial is too interested in the local, insular too uninterested in the outside. Their positive counterweights on this list are cosmopolitan in ordinary usage and, here, metropolitan — though that word has itself become politically loaded in British debate.
Collocations that sound natural
Social analysis has its own fixed phrases, and several of them are the exact wording that surveys, policy documents and broadsheet comment reuse without variation.
status quo
maintain the status quochallenge the status quoa return to the status quodefend the status quo
Latin, two words, no hyphen, never pluralised, and always with the.
social mobility
upward social mobilitybarriers to social mobilitystalled social mobilitydownward mobility
The direction word is upward or downward, never high or low.
zeitgeist
capture the zeitgeistthe zeitgeist of the erain tune with the zeitgeist
German for spirit of the age. Lower-case in English, uncountable, and normally with the.
gentrification
rapid gentrificationresist gentrificationthe gentrification of the areacreeping gentrification
peer pressure
succumb to peer pressureintense peer pressureresist peer pressureunder peer pressure
Uncountable, two words. The verb is succumb to or give in to.
cohesive
social cohesiona cohesive communityundermine cohesioncommunity cohesion
The noun is cohesion and is uncountable. Its opposite here is fragmentation.
Formal, neutral or informal?
Class vocabulary is where a wrong register does the most damage, because several of these words are either borrowed intact from French, mispronounced by nearly everyone, or carrying a political charge the speaker did not intend.
- nouveau richeFrench · pejorativePeople who have recently acquired wealth, used to imply they lack the taste that comes with old money. Invariable in English, and unambiguously an insult — there is no neutral way to use it.
- moresPronunciation trapThe customs and moral conventions of a group. Two syllables, MOR-ayz, not like the plural of more. Plural only, and it takes a plural verb: social mores have shifted.
- bourgeoisieFrench · loadedPronounced roughly boor-zhwah-ZEE. Carries Marxist analysis with it, as the notes above set out. The adjective bourgeois has drifted further, and now often just means conventional and materialistic.
- suffragetteHistorically loadedCoined by a newspaper as a mocking diminutive of suffragist, then adopted defiantly by the militant campaigners themselves. In Britain it names that specific movement; suffragist is the broader and older term for anyone campaigning for the vote.
- plutocracyFormal · criticalRule by the wealthy. Always an accusation, never a self-description, and distinct from aristocracy, where the claim to rule is inherited rather than bought.
- egalitarianFormal · approvingBelieving in equality between people. A compliment in most British writing, and the noun is egalitarianism. Note it describes a principle, not an outcome.
- civicFormal · neutralRelating to a city or to the duties of citizenship: civic pride, civic duty. Not interchangeable with civil, which concerns citizens’ rights and the non-military, non-religious sphere.
- societalFormal · often unnecessaryRelating to society as a whole. Careful writers prefer plain social unless the contrast is specifically with the individual, since societal often adds syllables without adding meaning.
Sentences to try
Four frames from social analysis. Each word carries an assumption, so check it.
- The study measures social stratification across three generations.
- The disparity in outcomes has widened since 2010.
- Rates of upward social mobility have stalled.
- Political polarisation is visible in every dataset.
Questions about society & class vocabulary
Can I use "bourgeoisie" to mean middle class?
Only if you intend the theoretical baggage. In Marxist analysis the bourgeoisie is the class that owns capital and the means of production, defined by its economic role rather than by income or lifestyle, and proletariat names those who sell their labour. Using the pair as neutral substitutes for middle and working class signals a particular analytical frame to any reader who knows the terms. For a neutral description, middle class, professional class or specific income bands will serve better.
Where does the word "meritocracy" come from?
The sociologist Michael Young coined it in his 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy, describing a future society in which a self-justifying elite claimed its position had been earned through measured ability — which he intended as a warning, not a model. The word escaped the book and was adopted approvingly by politicians across the spectrum, and Young later wrote publicly to object to the reversal. It is one of the clearest cases in modern English of a term coined as criticism becoming a term of praise.
What is the singular of "strata"?
Stratum. Strata is the Latin plural, so a strata and this strata are errors, in the same way as a criteria and a bacteria. The words are used in geology for layers of rock and in sociology for layers of society, and both fields keep the Latin forms. The related noun stratification means the arrangement into such layers, and the verb is stratify: a highly stratified society.