Poll

How to spell poll

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce poll

What does poll mean?

1. nounA counting of votes, or a survey recording the opinions of a sample of people.
2. verbTo receive a given number of votes, or to survey people for their opinions.

Poll in a sentence

• noun

  The latest opinion poll showed the two parties level.

• verb

  The researchers will poll a thousand households about their spending.

• noun

  The newspaper poll gave the mayor a narrow lead.

• verb

  The candidate was expected to poll well in the northern districts.

Where does poll come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Poll comes from a Germanic source, probably the Middle Dutch and Middle Low German word 'polle', which meant the top or crown of the head. It entered English in the 1200s simply meaning a person's head, and you can still hear that sense in the old phrase 'poll tax', a tax levied on every head, that is, on every individual. Because votes were once counted by literally counting heads, 'poll' shifted by the 1600s to mean the gathering and counting of votes, and later the place where votes are cast. The modern sense of an opinion survey grew from the same idea of tallying people's views one by one. The spelling keeps the double 'l' of its Germanic root, which is the main thing that distinguishes it on the page from its homophone 'pole'.

How the word is built

• poll (from Middle Dutch/Middle Low German polle: the top of the head, hence a counting of heads)

Words that sound like poll

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• pole: A long, slender length of wood, metal, or fibreglass.