Definition of people:

part of speech: verb

To settle with inhabitants.

part of speech: noun

The body of persons who compose the community; the multitude; the commonalty; persons in general; inhabitants.

Usage examples:

• He has more sense than any of our people Alexander Irvine in "My Lady of the Chimney Corner".

• People would talk too much. Charles Weathers Bump in "The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories".

• A community is in general terms the aggregate of persons inhabiting any territory in common and viewed as having common interests; a commonwealth is such a body of persons having a common government, especially a republican government; as, the commonwealth of Massachusetts. A community may be very small; a commonwealth is ordinarily of considerable extent. A people is the aggregate of any public community, either in distinction from their rulers or as including them; a race is a division of mankind in the line of origin and ancestry; the people of the United States includes members of almost every race. The use of people as signifying persons collectively, as in the statement " The hall was full of people has been severely criticized, but is old and accepted English, and may fitly be classed as idiomatic, and often better than persons, by reason of its collectivism. As Dean Alford suggests, it would make a strange transformation of the old hymn " All people that on earth do dwell" to sing " All persons that on earth do dwell." A state is an organized political community considered in its corporate capacity as " a body politic and corporate;" as, a legislative act is the act of the state; every citizen is entitled to the protection of the state. A nation is an organized political community considered with reference to the persons composing it as having certain definite boundaries, a definite number of citizens, etc. The members of a people are referred to as persons or individuals; the individual members of a state or nation are called citizens or subjects. The population of a country is simply the aggregate of persons residing within its borders, without reference to race, organization, or allegiance; unnaturalized residents form part of the population, but not of the nation, possessing none of the rights and being subject to none of the duties of citizens. In American usage State signifies one commonwealth of the federal union known as the United States. Tribe is now almost wholly applied to rude peoples with very imperfect political organization; as, the Indian tribes; nomadic tribes. Compare MOB. in "".

• People talk of London as the home of scandal. Marie Belloc Lowndes in "Jane Oglander".