A noble is someone who is a member of the nobility, meaning that they are from a social class that "possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence, than most classes in a society, membership thereof typically being hereditary." A peasant is defined as "a laborer, a farmer who owns a small farm or other member of a traditional subservient class of rural folk that existed in pre-industrial societies, especially in the Middle Ages under feudalism, and in present times still survive in some pre-industrial societies."