populus

Pronunciation

• IPA (Classical): [ˈpɔ.pʊ.ɫʊs]^[1]
• IPA (Ecclesiastical): [ˈpɔː.pu.lus]^[1]

Forms

populus m (genitive populī); second declension^[1] Old forms are poplus and popolus in inscriptions and Plautus, and the Salian hymn has a nominative plural poploe.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Italic *poplo- (“army”), whose further origin is unknown.^[3][1] The old meaning “body of armed men” survives in the title magister populī and in the verb populārī “to ravage”, which de Vaan explains as “to have an army pass through”, and in Umbrian poplo, the Umbrian cognate, which denotes the able-bodied citizens.^[3][5] Lewis and Short, Georges and Köbler connect it with plēre “to fill” and plēbs,^[4][6][7] and Wiktionary mentions the same root, Proto-Indo-European *pleh₁- (“to fill”), but de Vaan objects that a reduplicated *po-plh₁-o- would be strange in form and unclear in meaning.^[3][1] Watmough proposed an Etruscan source, on the strength of the town name Populonia, Etruscan pupluna, which the OLD mentions and de Vaan and the TLL find unconvincing.^[3][2][5] The adjective pūblicus has a long ū that cannot come from this stem.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler dates it from the Twelve Tables (c. 450 BC), de Vaan from Naevius, and it occurs in the archaic Salian hymn.^[7][3] Plautus uses it of the people as a community (“he does harm to the whole people”).^[2]

Semantic evolution

It meant a people or nation, and in Rome the whole citizen body as a sovereign power, the populus Romanus, which Cicero defined as a gathering of people united by agreement on law and by common interest.^[2][4] In the formula populus plebesque it excluded the plebeians, and in other contexts it meant the general public or the common people as against the upper classes.^[2] Poets used it of any multitude, even of fish or birds, and Seneca of a writer's following.^[2]

Medieval writers used the plural for men and women or common folk, and the singular for the host of warriors, an echo of the old sense, while populus Dei meant Christendom, and the word also meant the laity of a Christian community and a parish.^[8][1][7] The Romance languages keep it as Romanian popor, Italian popolo, Portuguese povo, Spanish pueblo and Old French pueple, the source of French peuple and of people.^[1][7][9] English took pueblo from Spanish in 1808 for a town in Spanish America.^[9]

Timeline

• c. 450 BC – The Twelve Tables use it, according to Köbler.^[7]
• c. 235–200 BC – Naevius uses it.^[3]
• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it of the people and the public.^[2][7]
• 204–169 BC – Ennius calls a man the choice flower of the people.^[2][7]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero defines the populus and uses it of the State.^[2][4][7]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid uses it of a crowd.^[2][7]
• 807 – A Freising document has a medieval sense.^[7]
• 1808 – English Pueblo is borrowed into English from Spanish.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. A people, a nation; a human community.^[2][4]
2. The people as a political body, the State; at Rome, the whole citizen body, at times as distinct from the plebeians.^[2][4]
3. The general public, the populace; the common people.^[2]
4. A multitude, a crowd; a following.^[2]
5. (Medieval Latin) The host, the body of warriors.^[8]
6. (Medieval Latin) Populus Dei, the Christians; the laity, the faithful; a parish.^[8][1]

Word family

• popellus
• populātiō
• populāris
• populō
• populōsus

Related words

• pūblicus
• Pūblius
• pūbēs
• plēbs
• English people
• English popular
• English population

Usage notes

A different word, pōpulus with a long ō, feminine, is the poplar tree; its origin is unknown, and it has been compared with Ancient Greek πτελέα (pteléa, “elm”), from which Köbler derives it.^[3][2][7] Döderlein contrasts populus and cīvitās, a people as a political society, with gēns and nātiō, a people by descent.^[10]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
4. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
6. ^ Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
8. ^ a b c Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
9. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ Döderlein, Ludwig (1874), Döderlein’s Hand-book of Latin Synonymes, tr. H. H. Arnold, Andover: W. F. Draper