Populous

How to spell populous

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce populous

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does populous mean?

1. adjectiveHaving a large number of inhabitants; densely populated.

Populous in a sentence

• China is one of the most populous countries on earth.

• The firm opened its flagship store in the most populous district of the city.

Where does populous come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin populosus, meaning 'full of people' or 'thickly inhabited', which was built on the noun populus, meaning 'the people' or 'a population'. English adopted it in the late 1300s and early 1400s, partly through scholarly Latin and partly through Old French, keeping the adjective sense of being crowded with inhabitants. The same populus root feeds a whole family of common English words, including 'population', 'popular', and the noun 'populace', the body of ordinary people. Because populous and populace sound almost identical, writers often blur them, but populous is always the adjective ending in -ous (full of people), while populace is the noun for the people themselves. Remembering that the -ous ending means 'full of', just as in 'dangerous' or 'famous', is the surest way to fix the spelling.

How the word is built

• popul- (from populus: people)
• -ous (adjective suffix: full of)

Words that sound like populous

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

• populace: The ordinary people who make up the population of a place.