baseling

One who is base or inferior

Noun

  1. One who is base or inferior
    • O weaklings, baselings we, — Achaian women, and not men! - 1873, Homer, The First Six Books of the Iliad of Homer, page 31:
    • Why lift aloft the baseling? give the sword To unanointed hands? garland the brow Which virtue never crowned? […] - 1882, Frederick Randolph Abbe, The Temple Rebuilt, page 179:
    • Or again, the world's simpletons, the world's nonentities, the world's weaklings and baselings (i.e., elements deemed such by the world) the chosen things, the very elements of God's selection for the kingdom, […] -...

Origin

From Middle English baseling (attested only in the sense of debased coinage), equivalent to base + -ling.

Forms

baselings

Synonyms

lowling

Related

underling