underperson

English

Etymology

under- +‎ person

Noun

underperson (plural underpeople)

1. A person of low status.
   • 1910, The Conservator - Volumes 21-22, page 51:

     If you bargained for overlords and underpeople. Then you surely bargained for death instead of life.

   • 2001, Jerome Lofgren, Suquamish, →ISBN, page 172:

     It has always been easy to kill an underperson, a savage, a worthless person, a sinner who is not like us, ...

   • 2013, W.K. Bickel, R.J. DeGrandpre, Drug Policy and Human Nature, →ISBN:

     Changing one's status as an underperson living in an underworld often sounds better than it is in fact since the transition is long and difficult.

2. (science fiction) A member of a subhuman sentient species.
   • 1895, Herbert George Wells, The Time Machine, page 118:

     For I felt sure these underpeople had taken it.

   • 2001, Karen L. Hellekson, The Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith, →ISBN, page 69:

     Life is no longer the long, easy ride the true men are accustomed to, and although life is not exactly fraught with peril, the true men learn of vulnerability and danger, things that the underpeople have long lived with.

   • 2012, Gardner Dozois, A Day in the Life, →ISBN:

     The Administrator sent me here on a crazy errand, killing an unknown underperson. I find out that the person is really a little girl. Then I find out that she is not an underperson, but a frightening old dead woman, still walking around alive.

   • 2015, A. Bertram Chandler, The Inheritors, →ISBN:

     These underpeople were even less human than the androids, their very appearance making obvious their animal origins.