Word definition: public

Etimology


From Anglo-Norman publik, public, Middle French public, publique et al., and their source, Latin pūblicus (“pertaining to the people”). Compare people. Displaced native Old English ceorlfolc and Old English folclic.

adjective


public (comparative more public, superlative most public)

Able to be seen or known by everyone; open to general view, happening without concealment. [from 14th c.]

Pertaining to the people as a whole (as opposed to a private group); concerning the whole country, community etc. [from 15th c.]

Officially representing the community; carried out or funded by the state on behalf of the community. [from 15th c.]

Open to all members of a community; especially, provided by national or local authorities and supported by money from taxes. [from 15th c.]

(of a company) Traded publicly via a stock market.

(not comparable, object-oriented programming) Accessible to the program in general, not only to the class or any subclasses.

Examples


VVith ſcoffs and ſcornes, and contumelious taunts, / In open Market-place produc't they me, / To be a publique ſpectacle to all: / Here, ſayd they, is the Terror of the French, / The Scar-Crovv that affrights our Children ſo.

Earlier this month Godwin had to make a public apology to the family of Daniel Morgan after the collapse of a £30m inquiry into his murder in 1987.

Seeing the British establishment struggle with the financial sector is like watching an alcoholic […]. Until 2008 there was denial over what finance had become. When a series of bank failures made this impossible, there was widespread anger, leading to the public humiliation of symbolic figures.

A mere 3% of the more than 1,000 people interviewed said they actually knew what the conference was about. It seems safe to say public awareness of the Convention on Biological Awareness in Nagoya - and its goal of safeguarding wildlife - is close to non-existent.

In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. […]  The public realm is privatised, the regulations restraining the ultra-wealthy and the companies they control are abandoned, and Edwardian levels of inequality are almost fetishised.

From another point of view, it was a place without a soul. The well-to-do had hearts of stone; the rich were brutally bumptious; the Press, the Municipality, all the public men, were ridiculously, vaingloriously self-satisfied.

But culture's total budget is a tiny proportion of all public spending; it is one of the government's most visible success stories.

Some are left for dead on rubbish tips, in refuge bags or at public toilets.

Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.

Related words


antonyms

private

related terms

people

population

pub

publican

publication

publicise, publicize

publicist

publicity

publicly

publish

republic

noun


public (plural publics)

The people in general, regardless of membership of any particular group.

(public relations) A particular group or demographic to be targeted.

(archaic) A public house; an inn.

(non-native speakers' English) An internet publication. Calque of Russian and Ukrainian па́блик (páblyk), па́блік (páblik).

Examples


Members of the public may not proceed beyond this point.

“Two or three months more went by ; the public were eagerly awaiting the arrival of this semi-exotic claimant to an English peerage, and sensations, surpassing those of the Tichbourne case, were looked forward to with palpitating interest. […] ”

Bush and Blair stand condemned by their own publics and face imminent political extinction.

To the extent that you will use them to reach many other publics, the news media will also be one of your publics.

these inconsiderate lads will be out of the house, and away to the publics, wasting their precious time , and

Russian publics report that the fighters of the Wagner group have already practically taken possession of Soledar, there are fights on the outskirts, where the Vushniks are trying to fight back in the salt mines.

Complex inductions are unconscious powerful components of influence. They include the following varieties:[…] 4) Truisms. The term comes from the English word "true", which means "truth". Therefore, under truism it is accepted to understand banal truths, i.e. something that in principle does not require confirmation, but it is so banal and common knowledge that it is rather strange to base on it, but here again there is a "but". In our subconsciousness we perceive it as a certain axiom, and this axiom is interpreted by our subconsciousness itself. As an example, the phrase "In matters of war, Russia is Russia, and Ukraine is Ukraine" was repeatedly encountered in Russian publics. In principle, there is no sense in this phrase, because not a single fact is given. However, each of the readers interpreted it for himself, and putting the word "Russia" in the foreground makes a hint that Russia is stronger than Ukraine in military terms, but the phrase itself does not express such a meaning extra-linguistically.

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