Noun
A bed of earth or rock of one kind, formed by natural causes, and consisting usually of a series of layers, which form a rock as it lies between beds of other kinds. Also used figuratively.
A bed or layer artificially made; a course.
Source: Webster's dictionaryHow marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long – the care of cares – the only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven – and straight you find a new stratum there. Sheridan Le Fanu
In modern civilized communities... the members of each stratum accept as their ideal of decency the scheme of life in vogue in the next higher stratum. Thorstein Veblen
In the lowest stratum of social thraldom, nowhere was the noble soul doomed quite to choke, and die ignobly. Thomas Carlyle
Any scientific treatment of the history of art must encompass not only the concepts of ‘social class' and ‘class struggle, but also all the terms which describe particular social groups such as social category, autonomous fraction of a class, fraction of a class, and social stratum. Nicos Hadjinicolaou
It is very probable that the great stratum called the Milky Way is that in which the sun is placed, though perhaps not in the very centre of its thickness. William Herschel
It is not astonishing that there are many journalists who have become human failures and worthless men. Rather, it is astonishing that, despite all this, this very stratum includes such a great number of valuable and quite genuine men, a fact that outsiders would not so easily guess. Max Weber