Other forms: commoners
A commoner is a person of no noble rank. Marry a commoner, a commoner by birth, commoners and peers.
It exists only where a nobility does, and in Britain it means anybody not a peer — including, technically, the monarch's children. At Oxford and Cambridge a commoner was historically an undergraduate paying his own way rather than holding a scholarship. Note that commoner is also the comparative of common, which is a different word doing quite different work.
1nouncommonerA person of no noble rank.
“The prince shocked the court by marrying a commoner.”
commoner is a person without rank.
Middle English comoner is common plus -er. Common comes from Latin communis, shared, so a commoner is one of the shared many.
Proto-Indo-European
*mey- (change)
Middle English
comun
English
common
English, today
commoner
Built from
From common + -er. common comes from Middle English comun. From Middle English comun, from Anglo-Norman comun, from Old French comun (rare in the Gallo-Romance languages, but reinforced as a Carolingian calque of Proto-West Germanic gamainī (“common”) in Old French -), from Latin commūnis (“common, public, general”), from Proto-Indo-European ḱom-moy-ni-s (“held in common”), from Proto-Indo-European mey- (“to exchange, change”). Displaced native Middle English imene, ȝemǣne (“common, general, universal”) (from Old English ġemǣne (“common, universal”)), Middle English mene, mǣne (“mean, common”) (also from Old English ġemǣne (“common, universal”)), Middle English samen, somen (“in common, together”) (from Old English samen (“together”)). a doublet of gmina and mean.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA