Modern Usage
In British, Canadian, Irish, Australian, New Zealand and South African English the back-formation pleb, along with the more recently derived adjectival form plebby, is used as a derogatory term for someone considered unsophisticated or uncultured. In September 2012, UK Conservative Party Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell was reported using the word in a tirade directed at police officers in Downing Street. He disputed the accusation, but intense media pressure forced him to offer his resignation on 20 October 2012.
Read more about this topic: Plebs
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or usage:
“A more problematic example is the parallel between the increasingly abstract and insubstantial picture of the physical universe which modern physics has given us and the popularity of abstract and non-representational forms of art and poetry. In each case the representation of reality is increasingly removed from the picture which is immediately presented to us by our senses.”
—Harvey Brooks (b. 1915)
“Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore!
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)