Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A first-year student at the U.S. Military Academy or the U.S. Naval Academy.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. 1. The common people; the populace; plebs; plebeians.
- n. A member of the lowest class in the United States naval and military academies; a freshman.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete The common people; the mob.
- n. Cant, U.S. A member of the lowest class in the military academy at West Point; also, a freshman at any military or naval academy.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a military trainee (as at a military academy)
Etymologies
- Probably short for plebeian. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Well, this plebe was a fresh faced young man from Texas.”
“For his entire freshman and sophomore year, called plebe and yearling years on campus, Campbell was allowed no civilian clothes on campus.”
“plebe" -- encampment, Loring actually kicked the offender out of his tent.”
“At least three times, these young men and women have sworn to serve their fellow citizens in the military — taking oaths at the beginning of their freshman (or "plebe") year, at the start of their third (or "cow") year and, on May 23, as they were commissioned lieutenants in the United States Army.”
“He had mastered one important bit of knowledge: That a "plebe" does well to lie low, and as the result of mastering that salient fact he was well liked by the upper-classmen and found them ready to do him a good many friendly turns which a more "raty" fourth-classman would not have found coming his way.”
“Because, under the new system, with candidates admitted in March, there is still a "plebe" class above them who remain plebes until commencement in June.”
“Twenty-five summers, counting this one coming, had rolled over his curly head, and each one had seemed brighter, happier than the last, all but the one he spent as a hard-worked "plebe" at the military academy.”
“Chester looked up with a quizzical smile as his "plebe" came in:”
“He kept up this steady gait, and, from the least promising "plebe," came out seventeenth in a class of seventy, distancing fifty-three who started with better attainments and better minds.”
“Having been once directed not to reply in ranks, the poor "plebe" would stand mute.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘plebe’.
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2nd part
prelude, ample, escalate, prototype, accession, acquisition, archives, zealot, indict, verdict, intimidating, timid and 454 more...
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discoveries
These are lexical items new to me that I've discovered in actual use (i.e. not in dictionaries, lists, or this site).
Looking back over this list, I haven't the slightest idea what mos...haymow, hawsepipe, stridor, bariatric, autotelic, apotropaic, cyanotype, tourelle, autobody, zudecca, stifado, corbeille and 1073 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, P
pellucid, pertain, pampas, prate, pinecone, philistine, pantocrator, papaverine, postmeridian, potlatch, pharology, pinniped and 622 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for plebe.
qroqqa He was on the staff of two Ohio governors in the eighteen-nineties; he was secretary to a Columbus mayor, who gave him an enormous brass key to the city, which I envied; around the turn of the century he went to West Point with a Congressional committee that was investigating the death of a plebe whose hazing had consisted of drinking the entire contents of a bottle of tabasco sauce.
—James Thurber, 1952, 'Gentleman from Indiana', in The Thurber Album Jul 14, 2008