Talk:people

Requests for verification - kept
Kept. See archived discussion of October 2008. 00:14, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

RFV discussion
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Requests_for_verification?diff=7108497

people
Etymology needs work, probably trimming. —Ruakh TALK 16:18, 28 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I tried to incorporate as much of the word-evolution information as possible into the etymology: but that wasn't much, because most of the 'languages' aren't considered separate by our (and ISO) standards, and the spellings differed from ones other reference materials agreed upon, too. But I added another sense to the English ("I'll have my people get back to you" - although now I question whether or not this belongs at *?my people/one's people insead or not), and RFVed the French section. — Beobach972 17:27, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I think the additional sense is fine where you put it; my people would be too specific (you can say "I'll have my people call your people"), and one's people might be over-thinking it. (We need the placeholder when it's in the middle of an expression, like in eat one's heart out:, but otherwise I think it might be too much work for a nebulous distinction.) —Ruakh TALK 22:52, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm concerned that definitions 5 is a bit iffy, maybe a more specific form of #2. I know I would never use people that way Alázhlis (talk) 00:10, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Tea Room discussion
A thread archived at Talk:race also discussed this word. - -sche (discuss) 22:27, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm interested to know if there needs to be any modification of this definition on the basis of when, or if the term became or originated as being exclusively used to denote human beings. It might seem a bit new agey to suggest that the word can be used to apply to non humans but for the fact that scientists have used the terms it originated from: "population" and "populous" interchangeably with any variety of species for many ages. Does anyone have any idea of how long the original words it derives from have been used in reference to non-humans and has that had any effect on the etymological history or modern usage/definition of this word "people"? I'm fairly certain it could easily be confirmed that the word people has been used even in reference to non human population groups in both modern and historic times, though primarily in fiction, probably even going back as far as some ancient greek mythological works.73.176.113.121 17:07, 6 August 2015 (UTC)


 * You are jumping to wrong conclusions. people does not originate from population or populous. They are related, but they were already different words when they entered the English language. While population may be used of nonhumans, people is only for humans. —Stephen (Talk) 17:45, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Quotations
Both quotations for the second sense ("Persons forming or belonging to a particular group") seem to very clearly belong to the first sense ("plural of person"). Mayhap some new, more fitting quotations can be found. Dylanvt (talk) 18:58, 15 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Agreed; I have moved them to the first sense. Searching for "a people" or "native peoples" should find good citations for the second sense. Equinox ◑ 19:00, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

The plurality of people
On the basis that the word people is, in examples that I have seen, taken as a plural, I'd like to test the view that the word peoples typically refers to a further pluralisation of a description that has already been pluralised.

In Google searches:
 * "people are" got "About 642,000,000 results"
 * "people is" got "About 57,900,000 results"
 * "of people is" got "About 45,600,000 results"

While I don't fully trust the distribution of these results they still provide pretty strong evidence of the great extent to which the word people is treated as a plural.

I appreciate that the word people is taken as a synonym for words like nation but think that, according to Venn diagram views of things, the words may be considered to view a similar content but in different ways. In biology, we might talk of biota and we might talk of lifeforms and we might view the two words talking about the same thing. We might talk of ten tens and we might talk about a hundred and yet, mathematically, we can recognise that the bottom line amounts to the same total.

Other plural nouns are often given a further level of plurality by use of a plural form of a collective noun. For instance, we can talk of pairs of feet (for two-legged animals), flocks of geese, sets of teeth and packs of wolves.

I think that we should minimise reference to singular definitions and modify the definition of peoples to fully note the pluralities involved.

GregKaye (talk) 20:43, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

"persons" : formality vs individuality
The usage note reads: Nowadays, "persons" as the plural of "person" is considered highly formal.

However persons reads: plural of person; used to refer to them individually, rather than as a group --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:22, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

(Informal) Animals or other beings distinct from humans
(Informal) Rabbits and squirrels are the furry [[little people] of the woods]. --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:26, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Fewer than 30 people showed up
At one time, some usage guides maintained that people could not be preceded by a number, as in Fewer than 30 people showed up. https://www.wordreference.com/definition/people --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:04, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Who is Garner?
From the usage note: "Under the traditional distinction, which Garner says is pedantic, persons describes a finite, known number of individuals, rather than the collective term people."

Who is Garner? I am having trouble finding who this refers to. I think Garner's full name should be used instead. Therealviklo (talk) 21:24, 13 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Clarified with a link and citation. 98.170.164.88 21:34, 13 November 2022 (UTC)