below stairs

English

Alternative forms

• below-stairs, belowstairs

Etymology

From below +‎ stairs.

Prepositional phrase

below stairs

1. (dated) On a floor lower than the one a speaker currently occupies; below the main floor of a multi-floor building.

   Synonym: downstairs

   Antonyms: above stairs, upstairs

   • 1691, Thomas D’Urfey, Love for Money, or, The Boarding School‎, London: J. Hindmarsh and Abel Roper, act V, scene 1, page 45:

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

   • 1752, William Stukeley, Memoirs of Isaac Newton's life:

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

   • 1952, Patricia Highsmith, chapter 8, in The Price of Salt‎, New York: Norton, published 2004, page 94:

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

2. (UK, historical) 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.
   • 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:

   • 1722 (indicated as 1721), [Daniel Defoe], The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c. […], London: […] W[illiam Rufus] Chetwood, […]; and T. Edling, […], published 1722, →OCLC, page 21:

     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: […]

   • 1904 November 10, Henry James, chapter 11, in The Golden Bowl, volume I, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, book first (The Prince), part second, pages 200–201:

     […] 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.

   • 1953, Saul Bellow, chapter 4, in The Adventures of Augie March, New York: Viking Press, →OCLC, page 57:

     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.

   • 2017 November 17, Skye Sherwin, “Chaïm Soutine’s Pastry Cook of Cagnes: a portrait of youth, but not innocence”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     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[.]

3. (by extension) Common, vulgar.
   • 2012 September 25, Catherine Bennett, “Mrs Cameron's diary: more trouble with the plebs”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     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?

   • 2023 February 11, Janan Ganesh, “After Germany's fall, which is the paragon nation?”, in FT Weekend, page 22:

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

4. (UK, historical, as noun) The areas of a large house in which house staff work, or the staff that work there.

Translations

downstairs — see downstairs