populace

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French populace (“the common people”),^[2][3][4][5] recorded in French from 1552,^[2] from Italian popolaccio (“rabble, riffraff”), also popolazzo.^[2][6][7][5] The Italian noun is formed from popolo (“people”), from Latin populus (“people”), with the pejorative suffix -accio, from -āceus.^[2][7][8] In Italian popolazzo is recorded from about 1300 for the common people and before 1347 for a rabble or mob.^[2] Florio glossed the Italian word as "the grosse, vile, common people".^[6][9] It is related to people, popular and population.^[5][7][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Ordinary people as opposed to the privileged classes, often with a sense of contempt: 1572, in a letter of Sir T. Smith.^[2][3][4]

Semantic evolution

The word came into English with the scornful tone of its Italian source, "the mob, the rabble", beside the neutral sense "the common people".^[2][8] Johnson (1755) defined it as "the vulgar; the multitude".^[10] In Culture and Anarchy (1869) Matthew Arnold gave the name Populace to the poorest part of the working class, which he described as raw and half-developed.^[5] From 1687 the word also meant the inhabitants of a particular town or country, like population,^[2] and this neutral sense is the usual one in the modern dictionaries.^[11][4] Poets used it from 1742 for the plants or animals of a place,^[2] and since 1823 it also meant a crowd or throng.^[2]

Timeline

• 1572 – the common people, the mob.^[2][3]
• 1687 – the inhabitants of a town or country.^[2]
• 1742 – poetic, the plants or animals of a place.^[2]
• 1823 – a crowd or throng.^[2]
• 1869 – Populace, Matthew Arnold's name for the poorest part of the working class.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. The people who live in a place; the inhabitants or population: The town's populace turned out to greet the team.^[11][4][2]
2. Ordinary people as a whole, as opposed to the wealthy or privileged; sometimes with contempt, the masses or the rabble.^[11][4][2]

Related words

• people
• popular
• population
• populous

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins