population

Forms

population f (plural populations)^[1] Middle French populacion.^[2][3]

Etymology

The modern word is borrowed from English population (“peopling, the inhabitants of a country”), recorded in French from 1682 and current from the 18th century.^{[4][5][2][3][6]} English had taken it from Middle French populacion, which was from Late Latin populātiō (“all the inhabitants of a place”) (5th century), from populus (“people”).^[4][6][5] That Middle French word, first recorded in 1335, stayed rare.^[4][5][2]

The TLFi instead treats the word as a direct borrowing of the Late Latin word, of which only the sense “all the inhabitants of a country” was taken again from English, where it is recorded from 1612.^[7] Rey also mentions a Middle French action noun of the same spelling, “being inhabited” (1490), formed on the old verb populer, which peuplement displaced.^[4] Classical Latin populātiō meant “devastation”, from populor (“to lay waste”), and has a separate, short-lived Middle French descendant.^[4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first recorded in 1335, in a royal archive document, for the presence of inhabitants or the inhabitants themselves.^[7][2]

Semantic evolution

Taken again in 1682, the word first meant the action of peopling a place, a sense later lost to peuplement.^[7][4][6] The modern sense, “all the inhabitants of a country or place”, dates from about 1750 (Mirabeau, 1755) and was probably also taken from English.^[4][7][5]

In 1778 it was extended to the inhabitants of a place seen as a particular category, and to the plants and animals living in a place;^[4][6] by 1831 it could mean inhabitants considered other than demographically.^[4][6] Around the middle of the 20th century it entered scientific use for a set of individuals or units of one kind observed together, as in statistics and physics.^[4][3]

Timeline

• 1335 – First recorded in a Middle French document, “inhabitants”.^[7]
• 1490 – Population “being inhabited”, from populer.^[4]
• 1612 – Bacon uses the English word for the inhabitants of a country.^[4]
• 1682 – A. Le Maître uses it for “peopling”.^[7][6]
• 1755 – Mirabeau's L'Ami des hommes uses it for all the inhabitants of a country.^[7]
• 1778 – Used of a category of inhabitants and of the animals and plants of a place.^[4][6]
• 1910 – The derivative surpopulation appears.^[4]
• Mid-20th century – The scientific sense appears.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. population: all the people living in a place (a country, a region, a town): la population de la Belgique.^[3][8][1]
2. All the people of a given category: population active, the working population, population scolaire.^[3]
3. (by analogy) The animals of one kind living in a place: la population d'une ruche.^[3][8]
4. (science) A set of individuals or units of the same kind studied together, especially for statistics.^[3][4]
5. (obsolete) The action of peopling a place.^[6][7]

Word family

• surpopulation
• populationniste

Related words

• peuple
• populaire
• populeux
• dépopulation
• peuplement
• Late Latin populātiō

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
3. ^ a b c d e f g Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
5. ^ a b c d e Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
8. ^ a b Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette