Meaning & use
third class citizen
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Meaning
nouncountabledisapproving
A person treated as having much lower worth and fewer rights than others in a society or organization.
Grammar: Countable: you can be a third class citizen, and plural is third class citizens.
Patterns
- treat someone as a third class citizen
- feel like a third class citizen
Many migrant workers say they are treated as third class citizens.
After the merger, the night staff felt like third class citizens in the company.
No one in a fair society should be made to feel like a third class citizen.
Word forms
| plural | third class citizens |
|---|
Common combinations
- treated as a third class citizen
- She felt she was treated as a third class citizen at the clinic.
- feel like a third class citizen
- Regional students often feel like third class citizens at the big university.
- become a third class citizen
- He feared his family would become third class citizens in the new system.
- second and third class citizens
- The law created second and third class citizens.
- reduced to third class citizens
- The rule reduced part-time teachers to third class citizens.
Synonyms and how they differ
- second-class citizen
- A second-class citizen is also treated unfairly but a little less severely, so third class sounds harsher.
- outcast
- An outcast is rejected by a group, while a third class citizen may stay inside the system but with fewer rights.
- underdog
- An underdog is simply expected to lose and does not suggest official unfair treatment.
- pariah
- A pariah is shunned by everyone, which is stronger than being given lower status.
Opposites
Word family
- citizen noun
- a legal member of a country
- citizenship noun
- the status of being a citizen
- second-class citizen noun
- someone treated as less important than others
- citizenry noun
- all the citizens of a place
Practice
The residents complained that the council treated their estate like a ___ of the town.
Choose one answer.
The phrase for someone treated as less important is third class citizen. The other options do not describe unfair low status.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “third class citizen”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.