proletarian [M17th] The proletariat [M19th] were the lowest class of citizens in classical Rome, those so poor that the only way they could serve the state was by producing offspring (Latin proles). The Latin form of word proletarius already carried both the political sense and the dismissive one of ‘common, vulgar’. The modern political sense of proletariat, ‘wage earners, the working classes’, was borrowed directly from French prolétariat and was particularly influenced by the writings of Karl Marx. The derogatory shortening prole is late 19th century.