Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A first-year student at the US Military Academy or the US Naval Academy.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun 1. The common people; the populace; plebs; plebeians.
- noun A member of the lowest class in the United States naval and military academies; a freshman.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun obsolete The common people; the mob.
- noun Cant, U.S. A member of the lowest class in the military academy at West Point; also, a freshman at any military or naval academy.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun US a first year
student at aUS military academy ; acadet - noun common person
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a military trainee (as at a military academy)
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Well, this plebe was a fresh faced young man from Texas.
Texas sheet cake for a birthday | Homesick Texan Homesick Texan 2007
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For his entire freshman and sophomore year, called plebe and yearling years on campus, Campbell was allowed no civilian clothes on campus.
FanHouse 2009
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For his entire freshman and sophomore year, called plebe and yearling years on campus, Campbell was allowed no civilian clothes on campus.
unknown title 2009
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For his entire freshman and sophomore year, called plebe and yearling years on campus, Campbell was allowed no civilian clothes on campus.
unknown title 2009
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"plebe" -- encampment, Loring actually kicked the offender out of his tent.
A Wounded Name Charles King 1888
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At least three times, these young men and women have sworn to serve their fellow citizens in the military — taking oaths at the beginning of their freshman (or "plebe") year, at the start of their third (or "cow") year and, on May 23, as they were commissioned lieutenants in the United States Army.
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He had mastered one important bit of knowledge: That a "plebe" does well to lie low, and as the result of mastering that salient fact he was well liked by the upper-classmen and found them ready to do him a good many friendly turns which a more "raty" fourth-classman would not have found coming his way.
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Because, under the new system, with candidates admitted in March, there is still a "plebe" class above them who remain plebes until commencement in June.
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Twenty-five summers, counting this one coming, had rolled over his curly head, and each one had seemed brighter, happier than the last, all but the one he spent as a hard-worked "plebe" at the military academy.
Warrior Gap A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. Charles King 1888
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Chester looked up with a quizzical smile as his "plebe" came in:
From the Ranks Charles King 1888
qroqqa commented on the word plebe
He was on the staff of two Ohio governors in the eighteen-nineties; he was secretary to a Columbus mayor, who gave him an enormous brass key to the city, which I envied; around the turn of the century he went to West Point with a Congressional committee that was investigating the death of a plebe whose hazing had consisted of drinking the entire contents of a bottle of tabasco sauce.
—James Thurber, 1952, 'Gentleman from Indiana', in The Thurber Album
July 14, 2008