Could someone help me with a query? I thought that I had read somewhere that hoi polloi meant the upper strata of society, yet I read this today in the New York Times online edition:


On Monday his imagists sent him out, sans coat and tie, shirtsleeves rolled above the elbow, for a gambol with Laura to the Jefferson Memorial. The man who is sliding in the polls on the issue of whether he cares about average Americans and minorities was trying to seem in touch with the hoi polloi, shaking hands and chatting up tourists, singing out "Happy Fourth of July!"


Does hoi polloi mean the proletariat or the plutocrats?

Hoi polloi is Greek for "the common people." It is often incorrectly taken to mean "high society", probably because of the way it sounds. Here's a usage note from Atomica*:

USAGE NOTE Hoi polloi is a borrowing of the Greek phrase hoi polloi, consisting of hoi, meaning “the” and used before a plural, and polloi, the plural of polus, “many.” In Greek hoi polloi had a special sense, “the greater number, the people, the commonalty, the masses.” This phrase has generally expressed this meaning in English since its first recorded instance, in an 1837 work by James Fenimore Cooper. Hoi polloi is sometimes incorrectly used to mean “the elite,” possibly because it is reminiscent of high and mighty or because it sounds like hoity-toity.

*Atomica is a handy little reference tool which you can download. If interested, click on http://www.atomica.com

Thanks Rapunzel! There are still many people who think that the word mean "the elite" or "high society". As recently as a week ago I received a postcard from a friend who said that the people at a National Park Lodge where they were staying are the hoi poloi because they had leather luggage and sporty cars.
I hope your post will reach many, although on this board, I am sure that everyone knows the true meaning.

chronist

Vernon, welcome to the board! I hope you will give us more posts that will make us more accurate in our conversations.

chronist

Hello, V.C.! Welcome aBoard.

There's a lot to be said for an old fahion classic education. One of the things the Good Sisters insisted upon was our learning the correct use of many phrases that originated in languages other than English/American including hoi polloi... and even a few in our Mother Tongue.
My memory of the 1940s into the mid-1950s is that the phrase was used correctly in those years even in newspapers and on radio... Dr. Bill - help me out here - wasn't there a radio interview program in the 1940s that boasted it was "the voice of the hoi polloi?"
In days of yore there were lists of "Common Phrases From Foreign Languages" at the back of dictionaries .. check out the AWAD chat (You can connect from the bottom of the AWAD Home page) with G. Nichols of Random House, in which she said it was the cost that caused the glossary's being dropped. I would pay the extra for a dictionary with that feature but Random House evidently feels most people would not.
How I wish Random House would make a separate book available with all those phrases!
Hey! Is that an idea, or ... what !?!?

Wow, surely the good sisters taught you what no one else has yet mentioned, that "the hoi polloi" is an egregious tautology, since "hoi" means "the".

I thank you all for your kindness and courtesy in welcoming a stranger, and for the gentility displayed in answering my question.

I have posed the question 'who or what are hoi polloi?' to many people. To date, most have come up with the 'high society' take.
So what other interesting vocab. exists for Plebeians and the aristocrats alike?

Bobyb reminds us that hoi is an article. Odd that we'd borrow an article along with the word itself. Is that because of the rhyme, maybe?

Oher words for the polloi: fellaheen, the Great Unwashed.

an egregious tautology

Are you going to take the word of someone who thinks that standing out from the herd is a bad thing?

hoi is an article. Odd that we'd borrow an article along with the word itself

Must have something to do with the El Niño.

Some things I found on the web suggest that the term for the elite might be "hoi aristoi".

I think in saying it they implied "the (phrase) Hoi Polloi ..." but what the heck, they are a Belgian order and their French and Belgique is flawless.
My fault not the Good Sisters ...

So what other interesting vocab. exists for Plebeians and the aristocrats alike

In the society that I tend to mix, the terms ar "lumpen proletariat" and "bourgeoisie." The first cannot be relied on but may be used, the second are in danger of death a la lampost. Preferably after the last king has been hung by the entrails of the last priest! (sorry, Father Steve)

So what other interesting vocab. exists for Plebeians and the aristocrats alike

In the society that I tend to mix, the terms are "lumpen proletariat" and "bourgeoisie." The first cannot be relied on but may be used, the second are in danger of death a la lampost. Preferably after the last king has been hung by the entrails of the last priest! (sorry, Father Steve)

Amongst my favourites are the great unwashed
and for that other lot, hooray henryies