Populace is usually used to refer to all the people of a country. Thus, we're often told that an educated and informed populace is essential for a healthy American democracy. Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous radio "Fireside Chats" informed and reassured the American populace in the 1930s as we struggled through the Great Depression. We often hear about what "the general populace" is thinking or doing, but generalizing about something so huge can be tricky.
The populace has suffered greatly.
high officials awkwardly mingling with the general populace
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Trump’s White House sent $1,200 checks to the populace in 2020, all of which featured Trump’s signature.—Tim Collins, Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government, 11 Dec. 2024 Being entombed alive is an apt metaphor for a populace that had its civic freedoms squashed by the Assad dynasty for half a century.—Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker, 11 Dec. 2024 These increases have hit a populace already struggling with widespread unemployment and soaring inflation of 34%, the highest level in nearly 30 years.—Nimi Princewill, CNN, 1 Aug. 2024 Bozzo leveled criticisms at the current city government, arguing for more collaboration between officials and the populace.—Luis Melecio-Zambrano, The Mercury News, 28 Nov. 2024 See all Example Sentences for populace
Word History
Etymology
borrowed from Middle French, "mob, rabble," borrowed from Italian popolazzo, popolaccio "the common people, the masses, rabble, mob," from popolopeople entry 1 + -azzo, -accio, augmentative and pejorative suffix, going back to Latin -āceus-aceous
Note:
The extension of -āceus to nouns, through deletion of the modified head noun, takes place already in Latin (see note at -aceous), and continued into Italian—compare focaccia "flatbread," already attested in Late Latin, from Latin focus "hearth." At some point the notion of appurtenance or similarity appears to have led to that of devaluation, whence the application of the Italian suffix to things of inappropriately large size or inferior quality. The derivatives popolazzo and popolaccio show both the Tuscan outcome -accio and a variant -azzo that represents the outcome of -āceus in Upper Italian or southern Italian dialects.
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