Meanings
- USethnicobsoletesluruncountableWhite person or people employed in a servile position, for example, as a butler.First known use 1835
“Huccome po’ w’ite trash buy any niggers? Dey ain’ never owned mo’n fo’ at de mostes’.”
1936 June 30, Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, published June 1944, →OCLC, part I, page 171 more example
In the south, there are no servants but blacks; for the greater proportion of domestics being slaves all species of servitude whatever is looked upon as a degradation; and the slaves themselves entertain the very highest contempt for white servants, whom they designate as ‘poor white trash’.
[1835 May 30, The London Literary Gazette; and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c.of the collected Literary Gazette […] for the year 1835, number 958, London, page 388Synonyms: mean white
- USderogatoryethnicmodernsluruncountableA poor, uneducated white person or group of people of low social status.
Good nutrition's given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling?
1991, Ted Tally, The Silence of the Lambs (motion picture), spoken by Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins)Synonyms: white trash
Synonyms & antonyms
nounWhite person or people employed in a servile position, for example, as a butler.
nounA poor, uneducated white person or group of people of low social status.
More synonyms by meaning
noun(slang) an offensive term for White people who are impoverished
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Cite this entry
poor white trash. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/poor%20white%20trash
“poor white trash.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/poor%20white%20trash. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “poor white trash,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/poor%20white%20trash.
Source: poor white trash on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.