class-labels

Updated: May 28, 2025

Walters, of course, would be identified with the label 'butler, and I can't imagine Rivers sitting down and drinking with a 'butler. He would only drink with people whom he thought of as his equals, that is, people whom he identified with class-labels of equal social importance to his own labels of 'antiquarian' and 'businessman."

H. Beam Piper - Murder in the Gunroom

There aren't any indications that anybody else was in the shop afterward. If that's the case, I doubt if the killer was Walters. You know what a snobbish guy Rivers was. And from what I know of him, he seems to have had a thoroughly Aristotelian outlook; he identified individuals with class-labels.

H. Beam Piper - Murder in the Gunroom