Sansculotte

Sansculotte is a noun that refers to an extreme revolutionary. Our word of the day comes from French, where its literal translation is ‘without knee breeches,’ a look you’d expect from a poor person. This is how sansculette came to refer to a French revolutionary from the lower classes. More recently, it has come to refer to any radical revolutionary regardless of class background or national origin. In my college days, I organized a boycott of the cafeteria until they agreed to offer more than one flavor of pudding. That was as close as I came to being a sansculotte in my youth.