groundling

• POS: Noun
• HYPHEN: ground=ling

CIDE DICTIONARY

groundling, n. [Ground + -ling.].

•  A fish that keeps at the bottom of the water, as the loach.  [1913 Webster]
•  A spectator in the pit of a theater, which formerly was on the ground, and without floor or benches.  [1913 Webster]

  "No comic buffoon to make the groundlings laugh."  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

groundling, n.
1 a a creeping or dwarf plant. b an animal that lives near the ground, at the bottom of a lake, etc., esp. a ground-fish.
2 a person on the ground as opposed to one in an aircraft.
3 a spectator or reader of inferior taste (with ref. to Shakesp. Hamlet III. ii. 11).

THESAURUS

groundling

Adamite, Babbitt, Philistine, arriviste, attender, audience, auditory, being, body, boor, bounder, bourgeois, cad, cat, chap, character, churl, claqueur, clown, congregation, creature, customer, deadhead, duck, earthling, epicier, fellow, gallery, guttersnipe, guy, hand, head, hired applauder, homo, hooligan, house, human, human being, ill-bred fellow, individual, joker, life, living soul, looby, lout, low fellow, man, mortal, moviegoer, mucker, nose, nouveau riche, one, orchestra, party, parvenu, pass holder, peasant, person, personage, personality, pit, playgoer, ribald, rough, roughneck, rowdy, ruffian, single, somebody, someone, soul, spectator, standee, tellurian, terran, theater, theatergoer, upstart, vulgarian, vulgarist, worldling, yokel

ROGET THESAURUS

groundling

Commonalty

N commonality, commonalty, democracy, obscurity, low condition, low life, low society, low company, bourgeoisie, mass of the people, mass of society, Brown Jones and Robinson, lower classes, humbler classes, humbler orders, vulgar herd, common herd, rank and file, hoc genus omne, the many, the general, the crowd, the people, the populace, the multitude, the million, the masses, the mobility, the peasantry, king Mob, proletariat, fruges consumere nati, demos, hoi polloi, great unwashed, man in the street, mob, rabble, rabble rout, chaff, rout, horde, canaille, scum of the people, residuum of the people, dregs of the people, dregs of society, swinish multitude, foex populi, trash, profanum vulgus, ignobile vulgus, vermin, riffraff, ragtag and bobtail, small fry, commoner, one of the people, democrat, plebeian, republican, proletary, proletaire, roturier, Mr, Snooks, bourgeois, epicier, Philistine, cockney, grisette, demimonde, peasant, countryman, boor, carle, churl, villain, villein, terrae filius, son of the land, serf, kern, tyke, tike, chuff, ryot, fellah, longshoreman, swain, clown, hind, clod, clodhopper, hobnail, yokel, bog-trotter, bumpkin, plowman, plowboy, rustic, hayseed, lunkhead, chaw-bacon, tiller of the soil, hewers of wood and drawers of water, groundling, gaffer, loon, put, cub, Tony Lumpkin, looby, rube, lout, underling, gamin, rough, pot- wallopper, slubberdegullion, vulgar fellow, low fellow, cad, curmudgeon, upstart, parvenu, skipjack, nobody, nobody one knows, hesterni quirites, pessoribus orti, bourgeois gentilhomme, novus homo, snob, gent, mushroom, no one knows who, adventurer, man of straw, beggar, gaberlunzie, muckworm, mudlark, sans culotte, raff, tatterdemalion, caitiff, ragamuffin, Pariah, outcast of society, tramp, vagabond, bezonian, panhandler, sundowner, chiffonnier, Cinderella, cinderwench, scrub, jade, gossoon, Goth, Vandal, Hottentot, Zulu, savage, barbarian, Yahoo, unlicked cub, rough diamond, barbarousness, barbarism, boeotia, ignoble, common, mean, low, base, vile, sorry, scrubby, beggarly, below par, no great shakes, homely, homespun, vulgar, low-minded, snobbish, plebeian, proletarian, of low parentage, of low origin, of low extraction, of mean parentage, of mean origin, of mean extraction, lowborn, baseborn, earthborn, mushroom, dunghill, risen from the ranks, unknown to fame, obscure, untitled, rustic, uncivilized, loutish, boorish, clownish, churlish, brutish, raffish, rude, unlicked, barbarous, barbarian, barbaric, barbaresque, cockney, born within sound of Bow bells, underling, menial, subaltern, below the salt, dummodo sit dives barbarus ipse placet.