Derogatory word or term for a peasant/lower class [closed]

What is a derogatory word or term for a peasant/lower-class person that is stronger or more insulting than pleb? It could be an archaic term used by nobles during the Middle Ages.

The first thing to grasp is that the nobility were generally not insulting of peasants. Many of them may have had little regard for them, treated them patronisingly (by today's standards), and certainly didn't want their daughters to marry one. But they had no need to be demeaning. Snobbery (as we know it today) is something that arrives with the emergence of the bourgeoisie from the mid-eighteenth century.

The English word peasant corresponds with the French paysan (fem -paysanne), which simply means 'country person'. In France country people are far more inclined to use the term to describe themselves. In modern English however the word 'peasant' is an insult enough in itself and in Britain can be applied to any person that the speaker doesn't like.

Plebeians were not peasants. In ancient Rome, they were an elevated order of 'free citizens' but lower than patricians. But using the term peasant or pleb to describe anyone in Britain today (I can't speak for America) is a considerable insult; as the British Cabinet Minister Andrew Mitchell discovered (though he claims he never said it).

Probably the expression Hoi polloi :

• (Ancient Greek: οἱ πολλοί, hoi polloi, "the many"), is an expression from Greek that means the many or, in the strictest sense, the majority.

  • In English, it means the working class, commoners, the masses or common people in a derogatory sense.

  • Synonyms for hoi polloi, which also express the same or similar contempt for such people, include "the great unwashed", "the plebeians" or "plebs", "the rabble", "the dregs of society", riffraff", "the herd", "the proles" (proletariat) and "peons".

Ngram: ( Usage) the hoi polloi vs hoi polloi.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

Riff raff is good for referring to the lower class or menial type of workers, with heavy condemnation. Not perhaps suited for the Middle Ages, though.

Perhaps a serf, a subject of a feudal lord, who worked the land in exchange for the lord's protection. Related is a thrall, a synonym for a slave, captive or servant.