Census

How to spell census

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce census

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does census mean?

1. nounAn official count or survey of a population, often recording details such as age, occupation, and household.

Census in a sentence

• The national census is conducted once every ten years.

• Households are legally required to complete the census form.

Where does census come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes directly from the Latin census, a noun built on the verb censere, which meant 'to assess, to estimate, or to register'. In ancient Rome the census was the official count of citizens and an assessment of their property, carried out by an official called the censor for the purposes of taxation and military service, and it is from that same root that we get the modern words 'censor' and 'censure'. English adopted census in the seventeenth century, keeping the Latin spelling almost untouched, and applied it to any systematic counting of a population. The spelling trap lies entirely in the sounds: both the opening and the middle consonants are pronounced like an 's', yet the word is written with a 'c' at the front and an 's' in the middle, and it ends in the Latin '-us' rather than the more familiar English '-uss' or '-es'. Holding on to that Latin shape is the surest way to avoid writing it like the unrelated word 'senses'.

How the word is built

• cens- (from Latin censere: to assess, register)
• -us (noun ending)