Deplorables: Nounified, pluralized form of deplorable, an adjective meaning “lamentable, very sad, grievous, miserable, wretched” and usually used in reference to events, conditions, or circumstances. The adjective is derived from the Latin verb plorare, to weep or bewail.
The adjective deplorable first appeared in print in the early 1600s. The OED provides one citation for the plural noun deplorables: the journal of Sir Walter Scott, published in 1828: “An old fellow, mauld with rheumatism and other deplorables.” (Mauld is an alternate spelling of a regional usage of mauled that means “fatigued.”)
The OED and other dictionaries now have another noteworthy citation: the remarks of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on September 9 at the LGBT for Hillary Gala in New York City. Here’s the relevant section:
We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people -- now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks -- they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America."
(Generalistic is not in standard dictionaries, but once again, Clinton“s is far from its first use.)
Clinton went on to describe “the other basket … of people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change.”