wage slave
Americannoun
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a person who works for a wage, especially with total and immediate dependency on the income derived from such labor.
noun
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ironic a person dependent on a wage or salary
Other Word Forms
- wage slavery noun
Etymology
Origin of wage slave
First recorded in 1885–90
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Just think, if only I had used that money to purchase Apple stock on the installment plan I'd be rich today instead of a wage slave.
From Slate • Mar. 18, 2011
Its caveat, which any wage slave should ponder, is that you can be hurt by your bosses' strength or weakness.
From Time Magazine Archive
With quiet poignance, with gay and gentle humor, with gradual but ultimately pulverizing irony, the director investigates the well-known social process that begins with a free soul and ends with a wage slave.
From Time Magazine Archive
He is not the dirt farmer or wage slave of the past, but the civil servant.
From Time Magazine Archive
Allowing five to a family, there are fifteen million families in this country; and at least ten million of these live separately, the domestic drudge being either the wife or a wage slave.
From The Jungle by Sinclair, Upton
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.