Demographic

How to spell demographic

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce demographic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does demographic mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the structure and statistics of a human population, such as age, income, or location.
2. nounA particular sector of a population defined by shared characteristics such as age, income, or interests.

Demographic in a sentence

• adjective

  The marketing team studied the demographic profile of their typical customer.

• noun

  The streaming service is hugely popular with the under-thirty demographic.

• adjective

  The census revealed a significant demographic shift toward older households.

• noun

  The new product was designed to appeal to a wealthier demographic.

Where does demographic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word draws on two Greek roots: demos, meaning 'the common people' or 'a populace', and graphein, meaning 'to write, draw or record'. The combination was coined in the nineteenth century to describe the statistical writing-down of populations, their births, deaths, ages and movements. The noun 'demography' appeared first, around the 1880s, and 'demographic' followed naturally as its adjective for anything relating to such population data. The same demos sits inside 'democracy' (rule by the people) and 'epidemic' (something falling upon the people), while graphein gives us 'graph', 'photograph' and 'biography'. Knowing the word breaks neatly into demo plus graph plus ic helps anchor the tricky middle, since the second syllable is the familiar 'demo' you already spell in 'demonstrate'.

How the word is built

• demo- (from Greek demos: people)
• -graph (from Greek graphein: to write or record)
• -ic (adjective/noun suffix)