popularity

English

Etymology

From popular +‎ -ity, from Latin popularitas (“an effort to please the people”).

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˌpɒp.jəˈlæɹ.ɪ.ti/
  • (General American) IPA(key): /ˌpɑ.pjəˈlæɹ.ə.ti/, [ˌpɑ.pjəˈlæɹ.ə.ɾi], /ˌpɑ.pjəˈlɛɹ.ə.ti/, [ˌpɑ.pjəˈlɛɹ.ə.ɾi]
    • Audio (US):(file)
  • (Australia) IPA(key): /ˌpɔp.jəˈlæɹ.ə.ti/, [ˌpɔp.jəˈlæɹ.ə.ɾi]

Noun

popularity (usually uncountable, plural popularities)

  1. The quality or state of being popular; especially, the state of being widely liked or in favor with the people at large.
    This destination has increased in popularity after great reviews in the guide books.
    Politicians are rarely known for their popularity.
    The massive popularity of the book led to it being adapted into a movie.
    Its popularity extends across all ages.
    enjoy popularity
    gain popularity
    lose popularity
    rising popularity
    enduring popularity
    surging popularity
    mainstream popularity
    widespread popularity
    brought to popularity
    grow in popularity
    explode in popularity
    a rise in popularity
    a decline in popularity
    a shift in popularity
    a surge in popularity
    • 1821-1822, Vicesimus Knox, Remarks on the tendency of certain Clauses in a Bill now pending in Parliament to degrade Grammar Schools
      Esteem, lasting esteem, the esteem of good men, like himself, will be his reward, when the gale of ephemeral popularity shall have gradually subsided.
    • 1983 May 11, Ronald Reagan, Proclamation 5060:
      Baseball is affectionately known as the "national pastime" because of its popularity as both a participant and spectator sport. Some 19 million children, youths, and adults play amateur baseball in the United States; and many millions more attend amateur contests as spectators each year.
    • 1994, Anthea Bell, A History of Food, Wiley-Blackwell, →ISBN, page 495, translation of original by Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat:
      "In fact this spice was making a second appearance in Europe: it was Guinea pepper, mentioned by Pliny as 'African pepper', and also known as Malaguetta pepper or grains of Paradise. Grains of Paradise had been very popular in the thirteenth century and again in the sixteenth; its popularity may have been due to the brilliant name thought up for it by some advertising genius born before his time."
  2. (archaic) The quality or state of being adapted or pleasing to common, poor, or vulgar people
    • 1600, Ben Jonson, Every Man Out of His Humour:
      So this Gallant, labouring to avoid Popularity, falls into a habit of Affectation, Ten thousand times hatefuller than the former.
    1. (by extension) cheapness; inferiority; vulgarity.
  3. (archaic) Something which obtains, or is intended to obtain, the favor of the vulgar; claptrap.
    • 1597, Francis Bacon, The Colours or Good and Evil:
      Popularities, and circumstances which […] sway the ordinary judgment.
  4. (obsolete) The act of courting the favour of the people.
    • 1603, Plutarch, translated by Philemon Holland, Moralia:
      Cato (the younger) charged Muraena, and indicted him in open court for popularity and ambition.
  5. (archaic) Public sentiment; general passion.
    • 1834–1874, George Bancroft, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent, volume (please specify |volume=I to X), Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company [et al.], →OCLC:
      A little time be allowed for the madness of popularity to cease.
  6. Something that is popular.
    • 1866, “Invalidism”, in The Atlantic Monthly, volume 18, number 109:
      It has fairly reeled on Schiedam Schnapps; and even the infant has his little popularities, having passed from catnip and caraway to Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup. There is never a time when the public will not declare upon any well-advertised remedy its belief in the motto of the German doctors, "We do cure everything but death."

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

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