middle-class

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   belonging to the socioeconomic group between the working class and the upper class

   The district became increasingly middle-class as professional families moved in.

2. 2
   adj

   associated with the values, tastes, aspirations, or respectability conventionally attributed to the middle class, sometimes used critically

   The critic mocked the play's middle-class concern with status and propriety.

The attributive compound of middle + class. Middle class became established for social groups between laboring and aristocratic or wealthy classes; the hyphenated adjective also developed evaluative uses about supposedly characteristic tastes and values.

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