Class

Class (pronounced klas or klahs)

(1) A number of persons or things regarded as forming a group by reason of common attributes, characteristics, qualities, or traits; kind; sort.

(2) A collection or division of people or things sharing a common characteristic, attribute, quality, or property

(3) A group of persons sharing a similar social position and certain economic, political, and cultural characteristics

(4) In educational use: (1) The period during which a group of students meets for instruction, (2) A group of students meeting regularly to study a subject under the guidance of a teacher or (3) the physical classroom.

(5) Collectively (as “class of YYYY”), all students in the institution who graduated that year, the concept extended also to politicians in an assembly all elected at the same election.

(6) A social stratum sharing basic economic, political, or cultural characteristics, and having the same social position; caste.

(7) In sociology, political science & economics, the system of dividing society on that basis; (ruling class, upper class, middle class, working class etc); of late extended to include concepts such as “political class”, “entrepreneurial class”, “creative class” etc; in Marxist theory, a group of persons sharing the same relationship to the means of production & distribution.

(8) Social rank, especially high rank.

(9) Elegance, grace, or dignity, as in dress and behavior.

(10) The members of a given group in society, regarded as a single entity.

(11) Any division of persons or things according to rank or grade.

(12) Excellence; possessing exceptional merit; in informal use, the best or among the best of its kind (sometimes as “touch of class”).

(13) In Hinduism, any of the four social divisions, the Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Shudra, of Hindu society; varna.

(14) Any of several grades of accommodation available on ships, airplanes, trains and such.

(15) In biology, the usual major subdivision of a phylum or division in the classification of organisms, usually consisting of several orders.

(16) In British and Commonwealth universities, the groups into which candidates for honors degrees are divided according to merit on the basis of final examinations or other method of assessment (first class, second class, third class and sometimes graduated (class 2A, 2B etc).

(17) In Ecclesiastical use (early Methodism, as classis), one of several small companies, each composed of about twelve members under a leader, into which each society or congregation was divided.

(18) In statistics, a grouping of data values in an interval, often used for computation of a frequency distribution.

(19) In mathematics (set theory), a collection of sets definable by a shared property, especially one which is not itself a set (in which case the class is called proper).  To please the nerds, every set is a class, but classes are not generally sets.  A class that is not a set is called a proper class.

(20) In computer programming (object-oriented), a set of objects having the same behavior (but typically differing in state), or a template defining such a set in terms of its common properties, functions etc.

(21) To place or arrange in a class; classify; to take or have a place in a particular class.

(22) As “class up” to improve the quality, tone, or status of; add elegance, dignity, style etc.

1590–1600: From the earlier Middle English classis (plural classes), from the fourteenth century French classis, from the Latin classis (a class or division of the people, assembly of people, the whole body of citizens called to arms, the army, the fleet, later a class or division in general, the singular form a back formation from the plural), from the primitive Indo-European kele- (to call, shout).  Classis displaced the Old English ġecynd.  The original use in the late sixteenth century was of a “group of students” (ie number of pupils in a school or college of the same grade) and that in North America became the standard form, enduring to this day.  The Latin classis was most used in military matters (of the army and the sea-fleet) and applied particularly to “a class, a division; army, fleet”, especially “any one of the six orders into which Servius Tullius (sixth king of Rome, reigning 578-535 BC) divided the Roman people for purposes of taxation” (traditionally, originally “the people of Rome under arms” (a sense in use in English by at least the 1650s), and akin to calare (to call (to arms)), thus the link with the primitive Indo-European kele- (to call, shout)).  Class is the standard abbreviation of classification and sometimes is used also for “classical” and “classified”.  The word is for many purposes used as a modifier and there are more than a hundred including asset class, business class, closed class, economy class, first class, leisure class, middle class, night class, professional class, school class, social class, working class. class action, type class, cruiser class, cattle class, class A, classable, class-based, class-conscious, classicide, classism, classist, class warrior, creative class, criminal class, high-class, low class, pseudoclass, ruling class, working-class, class enemy, class struggle and class reunion.

The 19BB (“Barrier Boat”, though sailor's slang is “Boomin’ Beaver”) is a specialized class of miniature tugboat used to deploy and maintain port security booms surrounding Navy ships and installations in port.  The smallest vessels on the USN's (US Navy) active list, the story Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) wanted to rename the BBs “Biden Class” (after Joe Biden (b 1942; VPOTUS 2009-2017 & POTUS 2021-2025)) apparently apocryphal.

Borrowing from the concept of classifications in educational & military use, the adoption in science for taxonomy (group of related plants or animals) dates from 1753 and has since been much expanded.  Dictionaries, perhaps surprisingly cite the 1870s as the origin of class being used with the meaning “high quality”, despite the sense of “a division of society according to status” (upper, lower, etc.) being in use since the early 1700s and the idea in societies of a “class-consciousness” will be ancient although it was only in 1903 the term entered English, from the German compound noun Klassenbewusst.  Special adaptations include the nouns classeme (in semiotics a generic or contextual seme, denoting a group of objects) & classitis (in web design, a critique of authoring stylesheets with redundant and semantically unhelpful classes).  Classy endures as an adjective (meaning “elegant; stylish) but the noun classy (also as clashee & clashy) is long obsolete.  Under the Raj, a classy (from khalasi) was an Indian worker at a port or dockyard, traditionally employed in pulling vessels out of the water for maintenance and repair and returning them to the water upon completion; the anglicized forms came ultimately from the Hindi ख़लासी (xalāsī), from the Classical Persian خلاصی (xalāsī).  Class is a noun, verb & adjective, classism & classer are nouns, classist & classful are nouns & adjectives, classable, classy, classless & classlike are adjectives, declass is an adjective, classed is a verb, classing is a noun & verb, classwide is an adjective & adverb and classward is an adverb; the noun plural is classes

Classy look: Lindsay Lohan rendered in the style of nineteenth century Impressionism by Gemini.ai.  The digital version was based on a photograph of her in a Jil Sander (b 1943) gown while attending the Disney Legends Awards ceremony, Anaheim, California, August, 2024.  On the day, although the environment was not optimized for photography, the light and even the breeze cooperated, the gown’s fabric swishing in a way the Impressionists would have painted, even had the air been still.

In the context of a group of people sharing the same social, economic, or occupational status, the term “class” implies usually a social and economic hierarchy in which those of higher class standing have greater status, privilege, prestige, and authority. Western societies traditionally have been divided into three classes: the upper (or leisure), middle (bourgeoisie) & lower (working) class (for Marxists, the significant classes were the bourgeoisie and proletariat although neo-Marxists have for decades adjusted the theory to accommodate changes).  Most associated with the writings of English-born US sociologist Michael Mann (b 1942), classicide (the construct being class + (hom)icide) describes the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of a social class through persecution and violence.  In that it may be compared to genocide (envisaged originally as the mass killing of defined ethnic or religious groups).  Between the two there can be overlap (such as in the Cambodian genocide by the Khmer Rouge regime in Democratic Kampuchea) but the emphasise in classicide is on the premeditated mass killing of a group based on their (perceived) social status; in that its similar to politicide (in which the targets are defined by their political activity) but in that case, the critical factor was what people do rather than what they are.  Very much at the heart of the French Revolution (1989), classicide was a feature of the “terrible twentieth century” and events able to be classified as such occurred in the Soviet Union under comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953), during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in the PRC (People's Republic of China) under comrade Chairman Mao Zedong (1893–1976; chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) & paramount leader of the PRC 1949-1976) and in Kampuchea under Pol Pot (Saloth Sâr; 1925–1998; dictator the communist (Maoist) state of Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) 1975-1979).  The related “social cleansing” (the removal of certain classes from certain places but (in theory) not involving mass killing) has the same relationship to classicide as ethnic cleansing has to genocide.

USS Defiant, the lead ship in the proposed Trump Class of guided missile cruisers to enter service in the 1930s.

The design has little in common with the historic battleships of the twentieth century but it's believed President Trump is drawn to the word "battleship" because they were the "biggest warships" he calls the Trump Class "battleships".  The future of surface fleets and their configurations is currently the subject of much discussion on the basis the likelihood of threats from massed swarms of autonomous or controlled UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles (drones)) may render them too vulnerable to risk.  

With machines, “class” came to be used of a “type” or “run” of units of similar (though not necessarily identical) units.  The practice pre-dated mass-production of consumer goods (on the model Henry Ford’s Ford (1863-1947) Model T (1908-1927) made famous) and most influential was the UK’s Royal Navy that in the 1870s & 1880s standardized the use of “class” for designs of capital ships, the convention being the name adopted was the first laid down (and usually, though not always, launched).  By the time of the coming of the upsurge in warship construction that marked the naval “arms race” of the early twentieth century, naval architects in many nations had adopted the scheme of designation.  The “class” referred not to a ship’s “type” but the set of design parameters (dimensions, weight, firepower, propulsion etc) distinguishing the ships from others.  With the smaller warships (destroyers, light cruisers etc), there might be a dozen or more of the class while the big ships (battleships, battlecruisers etc) typically were built in batches of no more than four and the occasional class did consist of a single vessel.  Because it was an “arms race”, ships could be approaching obsolescence not long after being launched and succeeding classes incorporated new innovations and, in the case of the battleships: more of everything, the most famous example being the Royal Navy’s Dreadnought, the first “all big-gun” battleship that rendered obsolete every battleship then afloat (including all others in the British fleets).

HMS Temeraire at anchor, 1909.  She was one of three Bellerophon-class Dreadnought battleships built between 1906-1909, all of which survived World War I (1914-1918) and were scrapped in 1921-1922.

Before navies crystallised the system of “class” warships had tended to be described by “rate” or “type” (first-rate ship of the line, frigate, corvette, etc) but individual names were invoked, phrases such as “ships of the Iron Duke type” or “the Majestic battleships” being common in oral use and routine in Admiralty documents.  So the concept of “classes” had crept in before the system was formalized and, in the late 1800s, it was three factors that encouraged the shift: (1) Industrialised naval construction (steam power, iron and steel hulls and increasingly capable machine tools made designs expensive meaning a run of standardized units was a way to amortize the investment), (2) Serial production (with an arms race in progress, navies were ordering more warships and, as Henry Ford soon would demonstrate, batches of machines with identical (or near-identical) specifications could be produced faster and more cheaply than bespoke creations and (3) Navies were becoming more bureaucratic (as the fleets expanded, so did the establishment & dockyard facilities and, with ships becoming more complex and maintenance intensive, Admiralties needed precise accounting, training, logistics, and doctrinal categorisation.  “Class” already had a long history in engineering (especially in railway workshops) and taxonomy so was the natural administrative solution and at the time, Britain was the world’s leading naval power so, as went the Royal Navy, others followed.

Classes on four wheels

BMW promotional shot of 1964 BMW 1800 Neue Klasse.

The monument in the background is the Siegestor (Victory Gate), located on the on the boundary between the districts of Maxvorstadt & Schwabing in Munich, Bavaria Germany.  Completed in 1852, it was commissioned by Ludwig I (1786–1868; King of Bavaria 1825-1848) to honor the Bavarian army but after suffering severe damage in World War II (1939-1945), it only narrowly avoided demolition.  BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavarian Motor Works) and the company has been based in Barvaria since formation in 1910.

As body types and other forms of differentiation proliferated in the twentieth century, cars were often sorted into “classes”, variously by manufacturers, dealers, registration authorities or reviewers.  The categories used from time to time numbered in the dozens but literal use of the word “class” has been rare in formal nomenclature although terms like “the 1.5 litre class” or “the family car class” were and remain common.  BMW’s Neue Klasse (1962-1970) became well-known outside Germany as the company’s first “mainstream” product on four wheels BMW and although always appearing in English as “New Class”, the literal translation of Neuse Klasse is “new cash register”; given the significance of the range in restoring the company to profitability (in 1960 it was a loss-making concern on the verge of being sold to avoid a declaration of bankruptcy) and ensuring its survival, the true meaning wholly is appropriate.  BMW’s Neue Klasse’s range was neither innovative or especially distinctive but was well-executed and the specification was perfect for the a point in the Wirtschaftswunder (the post-war “economic miracle” experienced by the FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany, 1949-1990))) at which a critical mass of the middle class had become sufficiently prosperous to trade in their Volkswagen Beetle for something “a class above”, just as a decade earlier they’d shifted from a motorcycle to one of the “microcars” built by BMW and others that had in the 1950s “put Germany back on wheels”.

BMW 1800 TI/SA, 1965 24 Hour Race, Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Francorchamps, Stavelot, Wallonia, Belgium.

The Neue Klasse tag was never used by BMW; the cars always given a designation based on engine displacement (1500; 1600; 1800; 2000) and the range was important also as the ancestor of the 3 Series, since 1975 the model that internationally has been the backbone of the company’s sales.  The model was noted too for it being the first time a “Hofmeister Kink” appeared on a BMW; although the motif had been seen for more than a decade in both Europe and the US, it became such a brand signature it came to be named after Wilhelm Hofmeister (1912–1978), BMW’s design chief 1955-1970.  Although in the 1960s the company never Neue Klasse part of its corporate language, so enduring did it become that in the 2020s it’s its latest generation of EVs (electric vehicle) is now officially the BMW Neue Klasse.  With Chinese manufacturing of EVs seemingly a juggernaut and thus facing troubles potentially as serious those the original Neue Klasse surmounted, the Bavarians hope history repeats itself.

Mercedes-Benz W116, the first S-Class: 1976 450 SEL 6.9.

Unlike BMW, Mercedes Benz did with the release of the W116 (1972-1980) sedans formalize use, the S Class (Sonderklasse, sometimes abbreviated as S-Klasse and translated as “Special Class”) the first instance of what would later became a convention (S Class, E Class, C Class etc).  The new name also encouraged retrospective use, the earlier “big” sedans (W111/112 (1959-1968) & W108/109 (1965-1972)) also sometimes referred to thus although this was never adopted by the factory.  A landmark achievement in its time, the original S-Class was the first recognizably "modern" Mercedes-Benz sedan and its design elements would be carried forward for two decades.

Mercedes-Benz advertising.  Although never explicitly labelling previous models as "S-Class", the factory does like to to hint and frankly, by 2026, the past was looking better than the future.

Despite that, Mercedes-Benz has in S-Class advertising (the model now in its seventh generation, the W223 introduced in 2020) often shown an array of previous generations of its “big” sedans including models like the W111/112 & W108/109 which, in period, never carried the designation and even the 600 (W100, 1963-1981), a model in the Grosser rather than S-Class lineage.  Although as early as 1968, a distinct range of smaller sedans had augmented the W108/109, (the range expanded further in 1983 by an even more compact model), the now familiar nomenclature (C Class, E Class, S Class) wasn’t standardized until 1993 when the alphanumeric names were inverted (500E becoming E500 etc), a change necessitated by the proliferation of models rendering the old system (dating from the 1920s) so prone to ambiguity it has become unmanageable.

Newspapers, advertisers and readers

Before the internet did what it did, for centuries it was print publications (newspapers, magazines and other periodicals) that were the prime vector for the distribution of news, information and entertainment; film, radio and television all had their effects (television notably contributing to the extinction of most afternoon newspapers) but generally, much of the established print media and what was then the “new media” managed a form of peaceful co-existence that was sometimes synergistic, newspaper proprietors and editors quickly expanding their coverage of what appeared on television because that was what their readers wanted, some buying the copies for no other reason.  In those jurisdictions that allowed the same corporation to publish newspapers and operate television stations in the same market, the techniques of cross-promotion became highly refined.

Unlike many mass-produced products, selling more newspapers did not necessarily increase profits; it was a matter of what class of readers were attracted.

Newspapers and magazines were historically unusual because the cover (or even subscription) price charged often would not be enough to pay for the paper alone, let alone the overall cost of production & distribution.  What covered the costs and provided centuries of sometimes vast profits was advertising revenue and although readers tended to think of themselves as buying “a product”, in reality they were the product being delivered to advertisers, exactly the same strategy that works so well for Facebook, TikTok etc.  However, an additional layer of complexity for the print media was that unlike a manufacturer of widgets, increasing sales did not always translate to greater profits.  It’s true the accountants at the widget factory also had to calculate if the extent of additional demand made worthwhile an investment in increased production (ie a night shift, an additional production line or factory etc) but one simplicity was that every dollar paid by a widget buyer (rich or poor) translated on the balance sheet in the same way.  What made print titles unusual was not all buyers were created equal and while the dollars paid by poor people for their newspapers were banked in the same way and had the same nominal value, they weren’t of necessity “worth having” because selling newspapers to the poor (ie of a lower socio-economic class) could be counter-productive for the business model (ie the more you sold to them, the greater the loss).

In the West, mainstream newspapers by the mid twentieth century had become polarized, the “popular” (ie tabloid) titles at one end and the “quality” press (ie broadsheet) at the other.  Because commercial success depended on being able to deliver to advertisers the “right” readers, an industry of market research emerged to perfect the analysis of working out which titles delivered the “right audience at the lowest cost”.  This research was both quantitative & qualitative because it mattered much to advertising agencies whether a title’s buyer lived in the south east, owned two cars, played golf on Saturdays and took an annual overseas holiday or lived in the north, took the bus to a football match on Saturdays and never left the country.  In many ways, they were separate populations and while both demographics might be attractive to those wishing to advertise products, in many cases they’d be different products and in some, exclusive to each.  By combining this data with advertising rates, agencies were able to work out for their clients which media (print, radio, television etc) could deliver the desired market segment at the cheapest rates.  In the case of national newspapers, the segmentation that mattered most was social class and what evolved in the UK was a metric to handle these calculations.  Developed by the industry collective, JICNARS (Joint Industry Committee for National Readership Surveys, a body owned jointly by publishers, advertisers & agencies), because the occupation of a household’s main breadwinner (chief earner) largely determined the spending pattern of that household, social class was determined primarily the their jobs and for this purpose there were six classes:

Class A: The upper middle class (by the mid 1970s in the UK around 20% of all households) with the chief earner (head of the household) typically a successful businessman, professional (lawyer, doctor, chartered accountant etc) or senior civil servant, living in a large detached house or high-priced apartment.  At the time, that class included headmasters of large public (ie private) schools, executives near board level in large companies, leading figures in local government, newspaper editors, senior journalists, professors and Church of England bishops.  As that list indicates, by the 2020s, the composition of Class A shifted a bet.  For the JICNARS’s purposes, the “upper class” (the so-called “1%”) were included in Class A.

Class B: The middle class, then some 10% of households.  These were often people holding “senior” positions who were financially stable and living lives of “quiet respectability” and although with neither the incomes or accumulated wealth (or, not infrequently, debt) of the Class A members, the significance was that in manners and cultural matters, their tastes and habits often overlapped, meaning their attention was sought by the same advertisers.  The Class B membership included vicars, headmasters of smaller schools, senior executive officers in the civil service, university lecturers, matrons of smaller hospitals, pharmacists, directors of smaller companies and qualified librarians in charge of smaller libraries.

Class C1: Just over 15% of households, the C1 families were the lower middle class, trades-people (employed or self-employed) and non-manual workers, “white-collar” workers such as articled clerks, owners of small businesses, clerks, typists, telephonists, curates and nurses.  A recent trend has been a marginalisation of the white collar component of the C1s by a number of factors, most obviously technology although this is spreading upwards to B and even A more than downwards.  Of the trades, despite recent rises in their economic value to advertisers, they’re considered culturally static so while their purchasing power has increased, they don’t identify with AB tastes.

Class C2: Intriguingly, many of those in Class C2 (about a quarter of households) enjoyed higher incomes than many in the C1 cohort and this was because, as the skilled working class, their economic value was higher because they contributed directly (and measurably) to productivity in a way an accountant’s clerk did not.  The C2 membership included foremen, fitters, knitters, plumbers, shop assistants with supervisory responsibilities, pastry-cooks and prison officers.

Class D: Although it probably wasn’t true statistically, for the purposes of the JICNARS, those is Class D were considered all manual workers, semi-skilled or unskilled; that didn’t mean the latter had no skills, it meant to an economist those skills could be quickly learned and required no formal education or structured training.  Some 20% of households were in Class D and typical employment profiles would include labourers, fishermen, bus conductors, traffic wardens and window cleaners.

Class E: Some 10% of households, the Es operated at the “lowest level of subsistence” and survived through precarious, low-paid employment, petty crime and transfer payments; they would now be classed as “welfare-dependent”.  Although the membership was diverse, the JICNARS for illustrative purposes listed migrants, those with substance abuse issues, families of old age pensioners, widows and those dependent on social security.

Predictably, the 30%-odd of the population in Class A & Class B tended to buy the “quality” papers, titles like the Financial Times, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian collectively drawing almost half their readership from the ABs, this declining to around 40% for the Sunday editions.  What this affluent readership did was attract high-priced advertising, enabling the titles to remain profitable despite a low cover price and circulations that were tiny compared with the mass-market tabloids.  Of note too is that it was these publications (along with The Economist (a newspaper that looks like a glossy magazine) that were most read by decision makers in government and industry.  So, it was the quality newspapers that tended to provide informed discussion on public issues, political affairs, business and the arts; although the record of their influence on public policy was patchy, what they tended to do was “set the agenda”, another attraction for advertisers.

What made the pre-internet newspaper business unusual was that there was sometimes a conscious attempt to reduce sales, a discussion usually not heard in boardrooms or among members of management committees.  In 1968, The Times had embarked on a major promotional drive and, using conventional techniques, sales indeed did spike and that was most pleasing until the research revealed some 60% of its readers were now in the undesirable C1, C2, D & E classes, something the advertising agencies to quick to notice.  Accordingly, the paper’s editorial direction shifted back, ensuring as many as possible of the intruders were shed and the bias towards the AB was restored.  Profitability was thus also improved because with each copy of The Times sold at a nominal loss (based on the cost of production & distribution), selling more made sense only if the rising readership attracted more high-value advertising.  With the less desired classes forming a majority of the leadership, not only were the traditional advertisers less attracted, those seeking to reach the C1, C2 and D classes (few except tobacco companies and their ilk chased the E class) were not willing to pay the high-rates charged by the Times.  The Times did not repeat the mistake and that different news appeared in different papers to attract different audiences was hardly surprising for as Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) put it in Scoop (1938): “They all have different policies, so of course they have to give different news.”

Nye Bevan and his wife Jennie Lee (1904–1988), London, 1934.

Waugh’s point of course can be considered as a matter of both cause and effect because whatever might happen on a publications profit & loss statement, there are also political consequences.  Until scared off, more than one government in the post-war years proposed increasing public expenditure in a way that would increase the burden only on taxpayers earning 2-3 times the national average and, without exception, these have been criticized by the “quality” press, usually on the basis not of such a fiscal package being “unfair” but that it would “alienate the political centre”.  As the JICNARS understood, in electoral terms, this was highly improbable because only about 10-12% of the population would lose out in such a redistribution but that sliver of the electorate was in the AB Class at the centre of the quality press’s readership and this dictated the response.  In his book In Place of Fear (1952), the Welsh Labour Party politician Aneurin "Nye" Bevan (1897–1960) pondered: “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.”  As political parties came to understand, it was possible to convince the poor to vote against their own economic interests if the “culture wars” dangled before their eyes could be made to seem enough of a threat, thus the weaponization in the US of guns, God, pickup trucks, trans rights, abortion, gay marriage and much else.

Microaggression

Microaggression (pronounced mahy-kroh-uh-gresh-uhn)

(1) A casual comment or action directed at a marginalized, minority or other non-dominant group that (often) unintentionally but unconsciously reinforces a stereotype and can be construed as offensive.

(2) The act of discriminating against a non-dominant group by means of such comments or actions.

1970: The construct was micro- + aggression.  The word was coined by African-American Chester Middlebrook Pierce (1927-2016), a former Professor of Education and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.  Micro (small, microscopic; magnifying; one millionth) was a word-forming element from the New Latin micro- (small), from the Ancient Greek μικρός (mikrós) (small).  The origin is disputed between etymologists, the traditional view being it was from the primitive Indo-European (s)meyg- & (s)mēyg- (small, thin, delicate) and was cognate with the Old English smicor (beauteous, beautiful, elegant, fair, fine, tasteful), source also of the Modern English smicker and related to the German mickrig.   However, there’s a highly technical discussion within the profession, hinged around the unexplained “k” in the Greek and there’s the suggestion of pre-Greek origin on the basis of variation between initial /m/ and /sm/, as well as the variant forms μικός (mikós) and μικκός (mikkós).  Aggression, dating from 1605–1615, was from the French aggression, from the Latin aggressionem (nominative aggressio (a going to, an attack)), a noun of action from past participle stem of aggredi (to approach; attack) the construct being ad (to) + gradi (past participle gressus (to step)) from gradus (a step).  The Classical Latin aggressiōn (stem of aggressiō), was equivalent to aggress(us) + iōn derived from aggrēdi (to attack).  The psychological sense of "hostile or destructive behavior" had its origin in early psychiatry, first noted in English in 1912 in a translation of work by the Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939).  While not exactly synonymous, microassault and microinequity are similar concepts, the most closely related verb being microinvalidate (to engage in microinvalidation, to make a relatively small statement or action (microaggression) that negates another person's experience, thoughts or feelings).  Microaggression, microaggressiveness, microaggressor & microaggressee are nouns, microaggress, microaggressed & microaggressing are verbs, microaggressive is an adjective and microaggressively is an adverb; the noun plural is microaggressions. 

Dr Chester Middlebrook Pierce (1927-2016).

Microaggression is an adaptable and possibly infinitely variable concept that probably most belongs in sociology; typically, it's defined as any of the small-scale verbal or physical interactions between those of different races, cultures, beliefs, or genders that are (perhaps sometimes generously) assumed to carry no malicious intent but which can be interpreted as revealing an underlying (and often unconscious) bias.  The criteria can be both objective and subjective and it’s noted compliments or comments intended to be positive can be defined as microaggressions if interpreted as patronizing or perpetuating stereotypes (racial, gender, sexual orientation, class, occupational, geographical etc).  Probably, the only "safe" identity-based categorizations are now those purely statistical: average heights by nationality and such although such is the sensitivity, the recommendation of many is now wholly to avoid anything that possibly could be construed as a microaggression, the only exceptions being those directed at groups defined as "privileged" (white people, Christians, cisgender, heterosexual males etc).  Very much a "spectrum" word, microaggression began life as a defensive shield but has in recent years attracted criticism (from both left and right) because it was able to be weaponized in "cancellation culture".  The standard psychology texts suggest the behavior manifests in three forms:

Microassault: An explicit racial derogation which can be verbal or nonverbal which can include labelling, avoidant behavior and purposeful discriminatory actions.

Microinsult: Communications that convey rudeness or insensitivity and demean a person's racial heritage or identity; subtle snubs which may be unknown to the perpetrator; hidden insulting messages to the recipient of color.

Microinvalidation: Communications that exclude, negate, or nullify the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a person belonging to a particular group.

The concept emerged to address the underlying racism that endured even after overt, deliberate expressions of racism (at least against defined minorities) had become unacceptable in polite society.  It held that microaggressions generally happened below the level of awareness of well-intentioned members of the dominant culture and were different from acts of intentional bigotry (such as the use of racist epithets) because the those committing microaggressions often intend no offense and are unaware they are causing harm.  That wasn't exactly a Golgothaesque "forgive them for they know not what they do" but in the abstract did position the dominant (and not of necessity majority) culture as normal with minorities treated as aberrant or pathological.

Although the word’s origin lay in the politics of race and ethnicity, it proved readily adaptable to other areas such as gender, sexual orientation, mental illness, disability and age.  Within academic sociology, there’s a (typically) highly technical debate about the nature of microaggression and intersectionality at the cross-cutting cleavages of non-dominant groups.  As regards the media, the discipline had a well-refined model to describe how microaggressions were either reinforced or encouraged by a news and entertainment industry that both reflected and was controlled by the hegemony of the dominant culture.  The sudden shock of the emergence of social media has changed things (diversity of source and content) but the main effect has been to balkanize: While there are places where microaggressions will not be tolerated, there are others where such things are routine and some where microaggressions are about the mildest forms of racism and such.  To date, much work in exploring this area has been impressionistic and it’s not clear if the analytical metrics, where they exist, are sufficiently robust for theories to be coherent beyond the sense of constant "mission creep".  In a sense, social media and the development of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) are synergistic with the maintenance and critique of microaggressions one of many elements in the culture wars.

As an indication of the how things have changed, in 1939 the terms “paleface” and “redskin” were in 1939 appropriated for use in literary criticism by Russian-born (in modern-day Ukraine) Jewish-American literary critic and essayist Philip Rahv (1908–1973).  What in retrospect makes that most interesting was Rahv was not a kind of “proto-MAGA” (Make America Great Again) figure from the Republican Party’s far-right (a faction that definitely existed in 1939 although different labels were applied) but was of the “left”, emphasizing the virtues of cosmopolitanism and Marxist analysis, one irony in his casual use of “paleface” and “redskin” being his advocacy of “breaking down” ethnic and racial barriers.  He was in the early 1930s a member of the ACP (American Communist Party) but, trans-nationally, long-suppressed fissiparous forces had been unleashed by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) and Rahv in 1937 was expelled from the ACP by the dominant Stalinist Popular Front faction, condemned as a “Trotskyite” (a follower the exiled Russian comrade Leon Trotsky (1879-1940; founder in 1938 of the Fourth International).  His political activities in the US for a while continued but by the 1950s he’d become one of “The God that Failed” ex-communists and, after a brief flirtation with the “New Left” (or rather what he thought the New Left should have been), he retreated to literature to wage a low-intensity campaign against structuralism.

One of General LeMay’s “civilizing influences”, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay that delivered the first of the two nuclear weapons (thus far) used in conflicts.  It’s now on display in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, Dulles International Airport, Chantilly, Virginia.

The splicing of the planet's “races” into “civilized”, “barbarian” and “savages” was very much a thing of nineteenth century European thought (although the notion existed also in Imperial China, the definitely very civilized mandarins there appalled by “barbarians” such as the British).  While the terms in this context probably originated in casual use, as the “scientific methods” of the Enlightenment became more generally applied, the notion was taken up, systematized and in some cases codified (with anatomical illustrations) by ethnographers, anthropologists, academic physicians, palaeontologists and others, the most notorious application probably the use in the pseudo-science of eugenics, a “discipline” to some so persuasive its echo continues on both sides of the Atlantic to be heard in the twenty-first century.  The concept of civilization (very much equated with “Western”) has long been a great concern of white supremacists and although the composition of “threats to its survival” does shift, it’s perceived always to be under assault.  Some have offered solutions.  US General Curtis LeMay (1906–1990; Chief of Staff of the USAF (US Air Force) 1961-1965) once remarked to a colleague: “Empirical evidence suggests the most successful way to civilize a nation is to A-bomb it…twice.”  It was said in making the observation he seemed “at least half-serious” and it had been Boeing B-29 Superfortresses under his command that in August 1946 had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki so the general likely felt entitled to be proud of his contribution to that civilizing influence.  A confessed Freemason, (a cult that can hardly be said much to have improved civilization), General LeMay was vice-presidential running mate on the 1968 ticket of notorious racist and segregationist George Wallace (1919-1998; governor (Democratic Party) of Alabama 1963–1967, 1971–1979 & 1983–1987) and, by historic standards, the duo enjoyed success, the AIP (American Independent Party) ticket gaining 13.5% of the popular vote, carrying five states for 46 votes in the Electoral College.

Allen's "Red Skins" and "Chicos": On supermarket shelves in Australia until 2020.

It is of course now unthinkable a figure of the left (liberals, progressives etc), Trotskyites or otherwise, would be so casually microaggressive as to take terms so vested with racism as “paleface” and “redskin” so they could, with no acknowledgment of the history, be re-purposed as devices in literary criticism.  However, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” and in the US in 1939, to do such a thing was unremarkable, an indication of the cultural currents underpinning society with the use of language both a product and part of the construct.  Paleface (the construct being pale +‎ face) came from US English and appeared in the anthropological record as early as 1797 (the origin uncertain) but seems not to have entered general use until the early 1920s.  The origin is uncertain but it was supposedly a calque from a Native American language; the form presumably coined when those of the first nations encountered Europeans.  The earliest verified use of the word redskin (the construct being red + skin) dates from 1769 although despite documents from the 1580s referring to the skin-tone of indigenous Americans as “red”, that use by European explorers and settlers was not consistent and in some instances may have been a reference to the use of red “paint” used to adorn the face and upper-body.  “Paleface” has been used as an intended slur against white people (with little apparent effect) but “redskin” definitely is an ethnic slur offensive to Native Americans although the record suggest than until around the mid-nineteenth century it was neutral and merely descriptive before ascending the “linguistic treadmill”.  Use puts it now well beyond being a microaggression.

The re-brand, 2020.

Allen's "Red Skins" and "Chicos" were in 2020 re-named "Red Rippers" and "Cheekies" respectively.  In the US, it was in 2020 the NFL (National Football League) team the Washington Redskins retired the name used since 1933, adopting Washington Football Team before in 2022 settling on a re-branding as Commanders.  The team's administration, when announcing the name-change, made no mention of the preceding controversy, nor the pressure from corporations, something most analysts suggested prompted the change more than any of the representations by Native American communities.  According to the Allen's, the recipes for the lollies remained “unchanged” and thus far Streets’ Golden Gaytime (sold in New Zealand as the Cookie Crumble) ice cream snack has survived the linguistic treadmill.

  

Gaytime meme.

The meme features Eric Abetz (b 1958; Liberal Party senator for Tasmania, Australia 1994-2022, Treasurer of Tasmania since 2024).  A student of Leviticus, Mr Abetz does not approve of any form of gaynessness.  First sold in 1970, and in general use clipped usually “Gaytime”, the confectionery is a toffee and vanilla ice cream, dipped in compound chocolate with a heavy sprinkling of large “crumbs” of vanilla biscuit, all on a wooden paddlepop-stick.  Although by 1970 “gay” was in use in the context of “male homosexuals”, it had not in Australian society gained critical mass and there’s nothing to suggest the name was then chosen for reasons other than the historic association of “gay” with “happy” and certainly the connotations later attached to “golden” by the gay community would have been unknown to most.  The company in the 1980s anyway embraced the possibilities with advertising tag lines such as “It's hard to have a Gaytime on your own” and complaints about the name in the new century received scant support from even gay-rights activists.

In 1939, Rahv used “paleface” and “redskin” to distinguish between what he called “two poles”; his sense was of the diametrically opposed “north & south” but his model was stylistic and thematic rather than geographic (and really not quite an antinomy as some have suggested).  The polarization as defined by Rahv had him group writers according to their attitude, style, subject matter and such, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), Herman Melville (1819–1891) and Henry James (1843-1916) classified as “palefaces” while Walt Whitman (1819–1892), and Mark Twain (1835-1910) were “redskins”.  In Rahv’s literary world view, palefaces had cultured and patrician attitudes, wrote in a mannered style using symbolism and explored “lofty” themes with great complexity.  The redskins wrote works of the rugged men of frontier life or the working class, criminals and “low lifes” in the unpleasant parts of towns and cities.  He didn’t seem to suggest writing in a colloquial and naturalistic way couldn’t be interpolated into thematically complex literary texts, just that it was inevitable a “down market” cast of characters and places they frequented would shape the work.  So Rahv saw palefaces as “civilized” and redskins as “barbarians”; presumably he’d have thought “savages” to be “non-literary” and thus “beyond the pale” as it were.  Of those Americans who came later, categorization must be speculative but can be fun.

Use of "Eskimo" definitely can be deemed microaggressive. While ice-cream lovers can still buy "Gaytimes", they had to adjust to the "Eskimo Pie" being renamed (variously "Edy's Pie" or "Polar Pie").  It remains to be seen if the use of polar bears in some of the new packaging triggers controversy.  The creatures do appear in aspects of Inuit culture and religion and it's not clear if permission for use has been sought.

William Faulkner (1897–1962) and Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) both seem redskins and Norman Mailer (1923–2007) clearly was no paleface though he might have thought being filed with the barbarians an effete slight on his savagery.  Gore Vidal (1925–2012) was a redskin who really wanted to be a paleface (and never stopped trying) while Philip Roth (1933–2018) was such a paleface he never quite mastered the “redskin mode” despite the occasional heroic attempt.  John Updike (1932–2009) was a paleface but the problem inherent in assigning writers with a hefty oeuvre to polarized categories is that at the margins their writing can “straddle” and sometimes those margins are wide.  That’s why plausible cases can be made arguing both Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) and Saul Bellow (1915–2005) at times at least “tended” to either pole.  What Rahv would have made of Faulkner in 1949 and Bellow in 1976 being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature while Updike and Roth were ignored (despite the latter engaging in self-promotion not far short of Donald Trump’s (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) auto-advocacy to be the Peace Prize laureate) would be interesting to know but safely can it be imagined he’d have thought the entire Nobel Committee redskins after in 2016 they conferred the honor in literature on musician Bob Dylan (b 1941).  Maybe it was women of the Swedish Academy (the body that chooses the Literature laureates) who vetoed Roth; in all he wrote of women (and it was a lot), Roth revealed much about himself but little about them, despite the usually elegant internal logic.  Rahv was anyway appalled literature appeared to exist in such a dichotomy and, being an old Trotskyite who never quite stopped taking seriously Karl Marx’s (1818-1883) politics, longed for a world where folk wrote like Marcel Proust (1871-1922) or Thomas Mann (1875–1955), the latter at least acknowledged in 1929 by the Nobel Committee.

1958 Studebaker Scotsman advertisement.

There was in 1957 nothing unusual or offensive in Studebaker naming a car “Scotsman” and it would have been well-understood as a reference to the car’s low purchase price and (alleged) TCO (total cost of ownership).  Scotsman buyers could even save a little more were they prepared to forgo the extravagance of chrome bumpers and choose the "delete option" of painted units; Mercedes-Benz also once offered that on taxi versions of a number of utilitarian sedans, the most produced the W115s (1968-1976). Other manufacturers used the same concept as Studebaker: Citroën ID vs DS, Cadillac Calais vs de Ville etc, some including fewer features and simpler trim, some also changing the mechanical specification but the principle was always: same size, less stuff, lower price.  The name "Scotsman" was picking up on the reputation of the Scots for frugality and it would have been thought something neutral at worst and more likely positive, thriftiness in the early post-war US still generally thought a virtue despite the best attempts of capitalism to encourage consumer gluttony; as fat overtook the land, things would change.  Technically, such use would now fulfil the criteria of a “microaggression” even if deployed in a way making clear it’s being intended as a compliment.  Scots can of course use the trope of themselves and even if used by others, as race-based microaggressions go, it’s probably at the "lower range" of offensiveness, those applied to “white people”, rarely noticed and certainly not grounds for cancellation.  Still, by the 2020s, it’s highly unlikely a car company would now name a car a “Scotsman” and certainly not if it was a “stripper” (ie a low-cost model with minimal standard equipment).

The “Scotsman’s supercar”: 1968 Plymouth Road Runner, Car Life magazine, May 1968.

Quite when the term "stripper" (in that context) vanished from commercial use can’t be certain but it would have occurred later in the twentieth century and certainly after 1968 when Car Life magazine, reviewing the new Plymouth Road Runner, called the stripped-down, low-priced muscle car: “a sort of Scotsman’s supercar”.  As well as a relic of linguistic use, Car Life’s test was interesting because unlike many of its contemporaries that often conducted tests using vehicles tweaked by manufacturers or dealers for optimal performance, they used the genuine, stock-standard articles, bought from the showroom floor, that being a more realistic path to discovering if thing did "what it said on the tin".  What Car Life revealed was the Road Runner (when equipped with the standard 383 cubic inch (6.3 litre) V8)) was quicker than a typical 383 powered car using the same body (as would be expected given the lower weight and modifications to the 383 used in the model) but was unable to match the sub-15 second ¼-mile (402 metre) runs reported by many.  The basic Road Runner was actually representative of the performance of most of the era’s “muscle car ecosystem” while the storied cars that “out of the box” were able consistently to log ¼-mile ETs (elapsed time) in the 13 or 14 second bracket were relatively rare and a tiny sliver of what came to be classified as "muscle cars", some of which just "looked the part" although that did prove a lucrative market.  Of course, to solve any perception of inadequacy, a buyer could tick the box for the optional 426 (7.0) Street Hemi V8 and while that was expensive, as well a fixing any performance deficit, putting one in a Road Runner was the cheapest path to Hemi ownership, a compelling case at a time when a thousand dollars was a lot of money.

Channeling her inner Scotsperson: Lindsay Lohan in Royal Stewart tartan, Freaky Friday (2003), costume test photo (Walt Disney Pictures).

Despite the perception of many (encouraged bydepictions in popular culture), tartan in the sense of specific color & pattern combinations attached to specific clans is something of recent origin.  Tartan (breacan (pɾʲɛxkən) in Scots Gaelic) is a patterned cloth consisting of criss-crossed, horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colours.  The word plaid is now often used interchangeably with tartan (particularly in North America and when not associated with anything Scottish (especially kilts)), but technically (and always in Scotland), a plaid is a large piece of tartan cloth, worn as a type of kilt or large shawl although it’s used also to describe a blanket.  During the disputes between England and Scotland, the wearing of tartan became a political expression and the Dress Act (1746) was part of the campaign to suppress the warrior clans north of the border; it banned tartan and other aspects of Gaelic culture. The law was repealed in 1782 and tartan was soon adopted as both the symbolic national dress of Scotland and in imagery more generally.

The Royal Stewart was the personal tartan of Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022) and although historically associated with the royal house of Stewart (or Stuart), it has become one of the most widely used in commercial fashion and in that sense appears in parallel with the clan affiliation.  Commonly worn to formal events such as weddings, ceilidhs (social gatherings, the nature of which casts a wide net) or Burns Night (celebrating the life of Robert "Rabbie" Burns (1759–1796 and still in popular imagination Scotland's "national poet")), the modern trend is to pair a kilt with a Prince Charlie or Argyll jacket, traditionalists adding a Sporran (pouch), Hose (kilt socks) & flashes, Ghillie brogues (traditional shoes) and even a Sgian dubh (a small dagger tucked in the sock) although carrying the last item may be unlawful in some jurisdictions.  Lindsay Lohan in her screen test wore the dress in something of the way in the 1970s it became part of the punk sub-culture but for more conventional types there are also scarves, ties, sashes and such.  Remarkably, in the age of identity politics and sensitivity to cultural appropriation, the etiquette guides note there is no objection to non-Scots folk wearing their tartan of choice except when an event is clan-specific in which case only those in the lineage should don the fabric.  That said, even then, the consequence of a tartan faux pas will likely be less severe than wearing a Rangers shirt in a Glasgow pub filled with Celtic’s hoops.  Still, deployed with sufficient cultural insensitivity, improper use of tartan could be a microaggression.

Microaggression in Progress: A Mean Girls (2004) "mall scene".

Mean Girls was replete with instances of microaggressiveness.  We’re still (mostly) allowed (quietly) to be amused by some of these, but, a quarter-century on, there’s now a more hostile critique of subtle verbal or behavioural slights that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to marginalized groups, even if genuinely often unintentional; what seems subtle to some may to others be blatant insensitivity.  In satire, there's still some tolerance for such depictions although audiences are now expected to be as appalled as they are amused and, of course, as a satire of the gut-wrenching ecosystem that is high school social dynamics, subtle forms of relational aggression and passive-aggressive exclusion were not hard to find and can be categorized:

(1) Racial and Geographic Microaggressions: The line: “If you're from Africa, why are you white?” was an invalidation of an individual’s cultural identity on the basis of not according with another’s geographic & racial assumptions & expectations.  The school map of “the cafeteria cliques” includes “Cool Asians”, the labelling reducing individuals to their ethnicity and when paired with what is nominally a most positive teen modifier (cool), that operates as a racial micro-insult implying (1) most individuals of that ethnicity are “not cool” and (2) non-white students are in a sense monolithic and acknowledged as “acceptable sub-groups” only if they in some way adhere to “white people constructs” of “white normative standards”.  “Black hotties” operates at the same level, although “hot” (a type of “coolness”!) usually is positive, the implication here is that “hotness” inherently is a quality of certain white girls and a black girl can be deemed “hot” only compared to other black girls; she cannot, in the absolute sense, merely be a “hottie”, that descriptor operating only on white girls.  The surprised response “Oh you speak English?” when someone is introduced to a black student thought to be from Africa reveals the cultural assumption such an individual would likely lack proficiency in the language; it’s a classic micro-invalidation.

Microaggression weaponized ironically.

(2) Gender and Academic Microaggressions: When Cady expresses interest in joining the school math team, she’s told it’s “social suicide”, a pushback reinforcing gendered and social stereotypes that young women cannot be simultaneously be popular, attractive and intellectually gifted, thus the trope of intentionally failing math to gain a boy's attention.  The “I’m too pretty to do math” T-shirt plays with this and works well if worn by a pretty math nerd although, it'd be really subversive on a "not-pretty" girl.

(3) Backhanded compliments disguised as “niceness”: Such things can be the least objectionable of all microaggressions especially if there’s some equivalency in the power-relationship and the quip is witty, subtle and (ideally retrospectively) understood.  It can also be done “by proxy” such as when saying to one student “I love your skirt, where did you get it?”, only to wait until she’s out of earshot before turning to another and saying “That is the ugliest effing skirt I've ever seen.”  What this does is make an individual realize they may not be able to find sincere or truthful anything they’re told.

Aggression rather than microaggression: “Fetch” anyway likely never would have “happened”.  Although a convenient clipping of “fetching” (often in the form “quite fetching” or “most fetching” and meaning “charming; captivating; compelling” etc), by the early twenty-first century “fetching” in those senses had long since descended into the category of “dated”; it was an “old people” word, use thus “social suicide”.

(4) Image and fat-shaming: Because the social identity of the “Plastics” was so tied to rigid “beauty standards” (some group-imposed, some the prevailing norms), by use of the “Kalteen Bars manipulation” it was possible to induce weight-gain in Regina, an act of sabotage opening the possibility of subjecting her to micro-insults and non-verbal cues (staring at her body or pointing out strict dress-code rules that really can’t be adhered to by someone gaining weight) to signal there’s been a violation of group standards, requiring exclusion.  In that, the techniques are different from something like: “Gretchen, stop trying to make 'fetch' happen.”; that is pure aggression: A group’s hegemon maintaining control by suppressing another member’s attempt to assert their personal identity through something as seemingly innocuous as the introduction of a new slang term.  It was a type of linguistic imperialism, similar to the attitude of Spanish nationalist troops who occupied Catalonia and the Basque country after their victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).  Harshly they would tell those they heard talking in regional dialects: “Speak the language of the Empire, don’t bark like dogs!”