A populace is a group of people forming the total population of a certain place. It is taken from the Latin word populus, which means "people", but also in the sense of a race, nationality, or locality. This can be compared with the Spanish word pueblo, which derives from the same Latin root.
Famous quotes containing the word populace:
“The populace is like the sea, motionless in itself, but stirred by every wind, even the lightest breeze.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made,
Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the rath,
And a small and a feeble populace stooping with mattock and spade,
Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet;
While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious, their chieftains stood....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines and Populace; and America is just ourselves with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)