From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishstratumstra‧tum /ˈstrɑːtəm $ ˈstreɪ-/ noun (plural strata /-tə/) [countable] 1 HEGa layer of rock or earth2 SSa social class in a society people of different social strata
Examples from the Corpus
stratum• The participant culture is an additional stratum that may be added to and combined with the subject and parochial cultures.• If the differences between strata are maximised and the variations within them minimised, the benefits from stratification can be considerable.• However, this increasingly self-contained stratum is broader than the bureaucracy.• The class approach Does the same fundamental value separate virtually all people in a society into a few distinct strata?• The nobility and the serfs emerged, then, as two of the distinct strata in feudal society.• By 1884 it was announced that Murchison's interpretation of a simple succession of strata was untenable.• We can now move on to analyse the middle class and the varied strata within it in terms of this dynamic of structuration.Origin stratum (1500-1600) Modern Latin Latin, “something spread, bed”, from sternere “to spread out” 