populace

UK/ˈpɒpjʊləs/US/ˈpɑpjələs/

nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #11,875 of 15,258leans written

The populace is the ordinary people of a place. The general populace, the local populace, address the populace.

It is formal and faintly distancing, since it is a word used about people rather than by them. It is a different word from populous, meaning heavily peopled, and the two are confused in writing constantly.

Definitions of populace

1nounpopulaceThe ordinary people of a place.C1
“The king's new taxes angered the populace, and riots broke out in the capital.”

populace is a people.

Where it comes from

Italian popolaccio, the common crowd, from popolo, people, from Latin populus.

Latin
populus
Italian
popolaccio
Middle French
populace
English, today
populace

Middle French populace, from Italian popolaccio, from popolo + -accio, from Latin populus.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

populace in the wild

The Demographics of Guam provides an overview of the history of Guam, as well as a depiction of the villages in the United States territory and its populace.
Demographics of Guam
A secret identity is a person's cryptonym, incognito, cover and/or alter ego which is not known to the general populace, most often used in fiction.
Secret identity
Soft despotism breeds fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the general populace.
Soft despotism
Alexis de Tocqueville observed that this trend was avoided in America only by the "habits of the heart" of its 19th-century populace.
Soft despotism
The average age of the populace is 41.4 years, slightly higher than the national average.
Gronant

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the populus family

people

populace — used about once every 10,786 pages · #11,875 · point at the bar for the others

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