Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Past participle of limp.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Politics) same as lumpenproletariat.
  • noun (Zoöl.) The European eelpout; -- called also lumper.
  • adjective mentally sluggish.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or referring to social outcasts.
  • adjective Of or relating to the lumpenproletariat.
  • adjective Plebeian

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective mentally sluggish

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Our social welfare R50 Billion budget per annum should address the basic needs of people and it should seek to address the problem of poverty, stemming from children, pensioners, people with HIV - AIDS, people with disabilities and the highly unemployable, what we term the lumpen proletariat.

    SPEECH BY OUPA MONARENG THE ROLE OF PARLIAMENT IN EXECUTING THE PEOPLES CONTRACT - STATE OF THE NATION DEBATE 2004

  • If Britain is broken, it's broken at the edges, the areas inhabited by what the left used to call the lumpen proletariat.

    On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with... 2008

  • Writing at some length at Labour Home about the complexity of the supposed "swing" to the Tories and the need to do the business for fairness I am a little surprised for this to be described as a lumpen core vote strategy and linked with some worthy Wiseman wishes and thepowerlesslowpaid's slogans by one Stephen Farrington of Cardiff.

    Archive 2008-05-01 2008

  • Writing at some length at Labour Home about the complexity of the supposed "swing" to the Tories and the need to do the business for fairness I am a little surprised for this to be described as a lumpen core vote strategy and linked with some worthy Wiseman wishes and thepowerlesslowpaid's slogans by one Stephen Farrington of Cardiff.

    Archive 2008-05-04 2008

  • Writing at some length at Labour Home about the complexity of the supposed "swing" to the Tories and the need to do the business for fairness I am a little surprised for this to be described as a lumpen core vote strategy and linked with some worthy Wiseman wishes and thepowerlesslowpaid's slogans by one Stephen Farrington of Cardiff.

    Don't Trip Up: Was I Suggesting a Core Vote Strategy? 2008

  • Such a lumpen could be the administrator of an establishment where, if the regulations say that a bottle of rum should contain 30 shots -- this is just an example, just to give an example; it is always good to accompany a thought with an example

    6TH NATL ANAP CONGRESS 1982

  • The causes are something a historian can study and document: the colonial period where long-standing social orders were overturned to serve colonial interests, and not-so-deep-seated animosities between the two main ethnic groups were exacerbated; the hatred of Tutsis that Hutu regimes inculcated even deeper into peasants for years so that most of these poor people at one point actually began to believe Tutsis were devil-like beings with tails and that killing them was their duty; teaming masses of impoverished urban Hutus (of the kind a Marxist would call the lumpen proletariat) murdering their Tutsi neighbors so they would cart off their property and rape their women (just like peasants murdering their neighbor to take his piece of land), and so endlessly on.

    AllAfrica News: Latest 2009

  • Others are the kind of lumpen proletariat that autocracies scoop up in a last-ditch effort to survive: convicted violent criminals, poorly educated young unemployed men, and no small number of sadists, sycophants, and psychopaths.

    Larry Diamond: Mubarak Must Go Larry Diamond 2011

  • Others are the kind of lumpen proletariat that autocracies scoop up in a last-ditch effort to survive: convicted violent criminals, poorly educated young unemployed men, and no small number of sadists, sycophants, and psychopaths.

    Larry Diamond: Mubarak Must Go Larry Diamond 2011

  • Others are the kind of lumpen proletariat that autocracies scoop up in a last-ditch effort to survive: convicted violent criminals, poorly educated young unemployed men, and no small number of sadists, sycophants, and psychopaths.

    Larry Diamond: Mubarak Must Go Larry Diamond 2011

  • According to Michael Weber, he has a particular aversion to the “magic lumpen”—hoi polloi who congregate in magic clubs and at conventions, where they unabashedly seek to expropriate each other’s secrets, meanwhile failing to grasp the critical distinction between doing tricks and creating a sense of wonder.

    Ricky Jay’s Magical Secrets Condé Nast 1993

Comments

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  • I think I've only ever heard this word as part of the phrase "the lumpen proletariat", which always amused me for some reason.

    September 2, 2007

  • unit of resistance to getting out of bed in the morning:

    gravity x inertia x apathy

    February 23, 2008