Popular

How to spell popular

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce popular

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does popular mean?

1. adjectiveLiked, admired, or supported by many people.

Popular in a sentence

• The new café quickly became popular with local commuters.

• She remains the most popular candidate in the polls.

Where does popular come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin populus, which simply meant 'the people' or 'the public at large'. From that root came the adjective popularis, meaning 'belonging to or favoured by the people', and English borrowed it through Old French and directly from Latin in the late 1400s. The earliest English sense was legal and political, describing something that concerned or appealed to the common people rather than the elite, and only later did it broaden into the everyday meaning of 'widely liked or admired'. The same populus root sits inside familiar relatives such as 'population', 'public', and 'populace', all of which keep that idea of the people as a body. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle vowel and the ending: it is -ular, not -ulor or -uler, and remembering the buried 'popul-' from population helps anchor it.

How the word is built

• popul- (from Latin populus: the people)
• -ar (adjective suffix meaning 'relating to')