Meaning of below stairs | Babel Free

Definitions

1. On a floor lower than the one a speaker currently occupies; below the main floor of a multi-floor building.
   dated
2. In or pertaining to the lowest levels of a large house where the house staff work and are accommodated, contrasted with above stairs where the owning family reside.
   UK, historical
3. Common, vulgar.
   broadly
4. The areas of a large house in which house staff work, or the staff that work there.
   UK, historical

Examples

“I’le lock her into her Sister’s Room below Stairs, for to night, there’s no Balcony there.”

“it was talkd, that there was an old gentleman belowstairs whom they fancied to be Sr. Isaac Newton.”

“She felt immensely superior to him suddenly, to all the people below stairs.”

“a. 1631, John Donne, letter to H. Goodere, in Letters to Severall Persons of Honour written by John Donne, London: Richard Marriot, 1651, pp. 158-159, My daughter Constance is at this time with me; or the emptinesse of the town, hath made me, who otherwise live upon the almes of others, a houskeeper, for a moneth; and so she is my servant below stairs, and my companion above:”

“It vvas his younger Siſters Chamber, that I vvas in, and as there vvas no Body in the Houſe, but the Maids belovv Stairs, he vvas it may be the ruder: […]”

“[…] those fortunate bachelors, or other gentlemen of pleasure, who so manage their entertainment of compromising company that even the austerest housekeeper, occupied and competent below-stairs, never feels obliged to give warning.”

“In the tiny below-stairs office a moody-looking matron took the papers and signed him into the ledger.”

“1972, Robertson Davies, The Manticore, Toronto: New Canadian Library, 2015, Part 2, Chapter 1, Children always lived closer to the servants than their elders, and Caroline and I never knew where we stood with anybody, and sometimes found ourselves hostages in dark, below-stairs intrigues.”

“Having lived the stereotype of the penniless artist in Paris, Soutine was drawn not to the glamour of the roaring 1920s, but to those in the world below stairs[.]”

“Unless we wanted dear Simkins, given he is loyalty personified, the Queen Mother used to die of jealousy, to do the below stairs POV that "pleb" would be considered positively affectionate & unquestionably better than prole & actually a great improvement on Simkins?”

“A paragon must embody liberal democracy. To get its hands dirty defending it is below-stairs.”

CEFR level