This term was originally coined by French economist and demographer Alfred Sauvy. It is taken from the French first estate (the nobility), second estate (the clergy), and third estate (everyone else, the commoners). A rallying cry of the French Revolution was "Tiers 'etat" (3rd estate), signifying the revolution was for and by the lower class. When this term was coined by a Frenchman, therefore, it conveyed not just poverty and exclusion from power, but revolutionary potential. The third world ("Tiers Monde"), deprived and despised like the third estate, might one day rise to take their due.