A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.
Agent K in the film Men in Black
I judge people by what they might be,—not are, nor will be.
Robert Browning, English poet. A Soul’s Tragedy, Act II
The people will live on. The learning and blundering people will live on.
Carl Sandburg (1878–1967), American poet. The People, Yes (1936)
The English noun
people has two distinct fields of application:
- as a countable noun
In linguistics, a count noun is a common noun that can be modified by a numeral and occur in both singular and plural form, as well as co-occurring with quantificational determiners like every, each, several, etc. A mass noun has none of these properties...
, a group of humanHumans are bipedal primates belonging to the species Homo sapiens in Hominidae, the great ape family. They are the only surviving member of the genus Homo. Humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving...
s, either with unspecified traits, or specific characteristics (e.g. the people of SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
or the people of the Plains).
- as a mass noun
In linguistics, a mass noun is a common noun that presents entities as an unbounded mass. Given that different languages have different grammatical resources, the actual test for which nouns are mass nouns may vary between languages...
, people is the suppletiveIn linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or even "highly irregular". The term "suppletion" implies...
pluralPlural, commonly abbreviated pl., is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. In the English language, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers.-English:...
of personA person is a legal concept both permitting rights to and imposing duties on one by law. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term has specialised context-specific meanings....
. However, the word persons is sometimes used in place of people, especially when it would be ambiguous with its collective sense (e.g. missing personA missing person is a person who has disappeared for no known reason.Missing persons' photographs may be posted on bulletin boards, milk cartons, postcards, and websites, along with a phone number to be contacted if a sighting has been made....
s instead of people). It can collectively refer to all humanHumans are bipedal primates belonging to the species Homo sapiens in Hominidae, the great ape family. They are the only surviving member of the genus Homo. Humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving...
s or it can be used to identify a certain ethnic or religious group. For example, "people of color" is a phrase used in North America to describe non-whites.
In philosophy and theory
The concept of
personA person is a legal concept both permitting rights to and imposing duties on one by law. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term has specialised context-specific meanings....
hood (who is a person within a society) is the fundamental component of any selective concept of people. A distinction is maintained in
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned...
and
lawLaw is a system of rules, usually enforced through a set of institutions. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a primary social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus ticket to trading on derivatives markets...
between the notions "human being", or "man", and "person". The former refers to the species, while the latter refers to a rational agent (see, for example,
John LockeJohn Locke was an English physician and philosopher regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered the first of the British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political...
's
Essay concerning Human Understanding II 27 and
Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg...
's
Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals). Central issues of interest to people are the understanding of the
human conditionThe human condition refers to the distinctive features of human existence. As finite and mortal entities, there are series of features that are common to most human lives, and some that are inevitable for all. These features and the human response to them constitute the human condition...
and the
meaning of lifeThe meaning of life constitutes a philosophical question concerning the purpose and significance of human existence or biological life in general...
, and survival.
ReligionA religion is a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, deity or deities, or ultimate truth...
,
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned...
, and
scienceScience is in its broadest sense to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome...
show or represent modes and aspects of inquiry which attempt to investigate and understand the nature, behavior, and
purposePurpose is the reason for an action being done, an object existing or being made or used. Purpose can be synonymous with the goal or the intended result of an action....
of people.
SociologySociology is the scientific or systematic study of human societies. It is a branch of social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, often with the goal of applying such...
,
economicsEconomics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, and
politicsPolitics is a process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic and religious institutions...
represent modes by which people investigate how to maximize a collective survival strategy.
IslamIslam Islam Islam ( al-’islām,
[There are ten pronunciations of Islam in English, differing in whether the first or second syllable has the stress, whether the s is or , and whether the a is pronounced as in father, as in cat, or (when the stress is on the i) as in the a of sofa...]
recognizes the
People of the BookIn Islam, the People of the Book are non-Muslim peoples who, according to the Qur'an, received scriptures which were revealed to them by God before the time of Muhammad, most notably Christians and Jews. The generally accepted interpretation is that the pre-Islamic revealed texts are the Tawrat,...
as members of
monotheisticIn theology, monotheism is the belief that only one god exists. The concept of "monotheism" tends to be dominated by the concept of God in the Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the Platonic concept of God as put forward by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite...
faiths founded upon
revelationIn religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, or making something obvious and clearly understood through active or passive communication with supernatural entities . It is believed that revelation can originate directly from a deity, or through an agent, such as an angel...
related to its own faith. By contrast, in
JudaismJudaism is a set of beliefs and practices originating in the Hebrew Bible , as later further explored and explained in the Talmud and other texts...
, the
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
s are often said to be the
chosen peopleVarious groups and individuals have considered themselves chosen by God for some purpose such as to act as God's agent on earth...
, a concept modified by the
ChristianChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
doctrine of "the Elect".
In politics
Various
republicA republic is a form of government in which the head of state is not a monarch and the people have an impact on its government. The word 'republic' is derived from the Latin phrase res publica which can be translated as "a public affair".Both modern and ancient republics vary widely in their...
s govern, or claim to govern, in the name of
the people. Both the
Roman RepublicThe Roman Republic was the phase of the ancient Roman civilization characterized by a republican form of government. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, c...
and the
Roman EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean. The term is used to describe the Roman state during and after the time of the first emperor,...
used the
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
term
Senatus Populusque RomanusSPQR is an initialism from a Latin phrase, Senatus Populusque Romanus , referring to the government of the ancient Roman Republic, and used as an official signature of the government...
, (the Senate and People of Rome). This term was fixed to Roman legionary standards, and even after the
Roman EmperorThe Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period . The Romans had no single term for the office: Latin titles such as imperator , augustus, caesar and princeps were all associated with it...
s achieved a state of total personal autarchy, they continued to wield their power in the name of the Senate and People of Rome. A
People's RepublicPeople's Republic, also especially in other languages Popular Republic, is a title that has often been used by Marxist-Leninist governments to describe their state...
is typically a
MarxistMarxism is the political philosophy and economic worldview based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis of capitalism, a theory of social change, and an atheist view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; three primary aspects of...
or
socialistSocialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on...
one-party state that claims to govern on behalf of the people.
PopulismPopulism is a political discourse that juxtaposes "the people" with "the elites." Populism may comprise an ideology urging social and political system changes and/or a rhetorical style deployed by members of political or social movements...
is another umbrella term for various political tendencies that claim to represent the people, usually with an implication that they serve the
common people instead of the
eliteElitism is the belief or attitude that those individuals who are considered members of the elite—a select group of people with outstanding personal abilities, intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes—are those whose views on a matter are to...
.
In law
In
criminal lawThe term criminal law, sometimes called penal law, refers to any of various bodies of rules in different jurisdictions whose common characteristic is the potential for unique and often severe impositions as punishment for failure to comply...
, in certain jurisdictions, criminal prosecutions are brought in the name of
the People. Several U.S. states, including
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
,
IllinoisIllinois , the 21st state admitted to the United States of America, is the most populous and demographically diverse Midwestern state and the fifth most populous state in the nation...
, and
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, use this style. Citations outside the jurisdictions in question usually substitute the name of the state for the words "the People" in the case captions. Four states —
MassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Most of its population of...
,
VirginiaThe Commonwealth of Virginia is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" because it is the birthplace of eight U.S. presidents. The geography and climate of the state are shaped by the Blue...
,
PennsylvaniaThe Commonwealth of Pennsylvania , often colloquially referred to as PA by natives and Northeasterners, is a state located in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States...
, and
KentuckyThe Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. Kentucky is a Southern state situated in the Upland South, although the state is infrequently placed, geographically and culturally, in the Midwest. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a...
— refer to themselves as
the CommonwealthCommonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good or in which all participants have equal standing...
in case captions and legal process. Other states, such as
IndianaIndiana is a U.S. state, the 19
th admitted to the Union. It is located in the Great Lakes region, and with approximately 6.3 million residents, is ranked 16
th in population and 17
th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38
th in land area, and is the...
, typically refer to themselves as
the State in case captions and legal process. The political theory underlying this format is that criminal prosecutions are brought in the name of the
sovereignSovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
; thus, in these U.S. states, the "people" are judged to be the sovereign, even as in the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
and other dependencies of the
British CrownThe Monarchy of the United Kingdom is the constitutional monarchy of the United Kingdom and its overseas territories. The present monarch, Elizabeth II, has reigned since 6 February 1952. She and her immediate family undertake various official, ceremonial and representational duties...
, criminal prosecutions are typically brought in the name of
the CrownThe Crown is a corporation sole that in certain countries of the Commonwealth of Nations, as well as in any provincial or state sub-divisions thereof, represents the legal embodiment of executive government...
. "The people" identifies the entire body of the citizens of a jurisdiction invested with political power or gathered for political purposes.