1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/People

PEOPLE, a collective term for persons in general, especially as forming the body of persons in a community or nation, the “folk” (the O.E. and Teut. word, cf. Ger. Volk). The earlier forms of the word were peple, poeple, puple, &c.; the present form is found as early as the 15th century, but was not established till the beginning of the 16th. Old French, from which it was adapted, had many of these forms as well as the mod. Fr. peuple. The Lat. populus is generally taken to be a reduplication from the root ple,—fill, seen in plenus, full; plebs, the commons; Gr. πλῆθος, multitude.