bottom feeder

bottom feeder

1. Someone who occupies or tries to advance from the lowest position in society, politics, business, etc., by taking advantage of the misfortunes or dregs of others. Likened to fish or other animals that feed on refuse at the bottom of a body of water. Money lenders are often considered the bottom feeders of the financial world. Political pundits are all just bottom feeders in my eyes.
2. Any person of low, despicable, or dubious social status. This is an ugly part of town; it's full of drug dealers and bottom feeders. Jerry's just a bottom feeder: he won't get a job, so he just mooches off us every day.
See also: bottom
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • reassign
  • reassign to
  • reassign to (something)
  • (Someone or something) called, they want their (something) back!
  • (one's) deepest sympathy
  • one's deepest sympathy
  • sympathy
  • ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for (someone or something)
  • tomorrow
  • slop bowl
References in periodicals archive
Back in the bygone days of 1996 perhaps phrases such as Gulf War Syndrome, Prozac and road rage seemed as strange as bleeding edge and bottom feeder do now.
Playmaker James Berrett con-firmed the players will be determined to go again when they travel to face bottom feeders Notts County next Saturday.
Popdose.com has become a leader in entertainment websites thanks to long-running series like Dave Steed's Bottom Feeders; staff selections articles presented as The Popdose 100; the long-running discussion series Digging For Gold; and the annual tradition, Mellowmas where Editor-In-Chief Jeff Giles with Managing Editor Jason Hare subject themselves to the very worst in Christmas music for the benefit of the readership.
Eventually, truth will become the gold standard of excellence in our industry, and the bottom feeders will simply fade away.
Rutland wrote: "Looking at the style of 'writing' it looks like the work of those bottom feeders that can barely string two words together and every locality seems to have a few.
In female-run macaque societies, big shots' daughters are guaranteed privileged lives while daughters of bottom feeders eke out a miserable existence.
Abused and maltreated by a series of men ("lazy, good-for-nothing pig-eyed bottom feeders"), she's moved in with Grove, a decent, soft-spoken backwoodsman, and hopes for the best.
Three of the bottom four - Moseley, Scottish and Plymouth - have four wins, while bottom feeders Esher have none, although they do have the confidence of an unlikely draw at Old Deer Park on Boxing Day.
Some bottom feeders, like sheepshead or drums, have massive pharyngeal teeth for crushing shells of small clams and snails.
Hagfish represent an ancient and unique evolutionary lineage; as bottom feeders they play an important role by cleaning the ocean floor and recycling nutrients into the food web which maintains the overall health of the ecosystems they inhabit.
If you don't, then perhaps you're best left in blissful ignorance, because here reside (crowding out the few 'normals' that swim among them) the true bottom feeders of our society.
Both the MSCI Eastern Europe index and MSCI Latin America closed in positive territory, up 0.9% and 0.1%, respectively as relative underperformance attracted bottom feeders. In emerging Asia stocks are also climbing this morning with the Shanghai Composite currently up 0.9% and India's BSE Sensex index up 0.7%.
Having spent most of his career chasing "bottom feeders", Haller lands what could be the case of a lifetime when he's hired by Beverly Hills millionaire Louis Roulet (Phillippe), who is accused of attempted murder.
"The bottom feeders made bids, but they never got any place," said Koch.
"The result of all this is that the auction room is now perceived less as a room full of bottom feeders or dregs of the market going cheap, but rather, characterised by the likes of repossessed commercial property in very good condition."