noun
people
PEE-pul/ˈpiːpl/
A community sharing a national or cultural identity.
The museum celebrates the history of the local people.
Etymology
Latin populus could name a nation, its citizens, or a crowd. That collective range survives in English people, which treats human beings together as a group.
In context
In every group of human beings of hundreds of people—which is the size of a band—or sometimes a thousand people, they accumulate shared cultural knowledge about tools, life strategies
More examples
- Many peoples share this region.
- She studies the art of the Maya people.
- The treaty recognized the rights of Indigenous peoples.
Forms
people · peoples
Similar words
- persons
- More formal, often treating individuals separately.