public

Questions about public

What is another word for public?

It depends which public you mean. In the sense “people in general considered as a whole”, the synonyms are populace, world. Across all 4 senses there are 2 distinct synonyms, and they are not interchangeable with each other — this page lists them under the sense each one belongs to.

What is the opposite of public?

The recorded antonym is private. Opposites are sense-specific too: this page shows which meaning each one is the opposite of, because a word rarely has a single opposite that holds for all of its senses.

Why are the synonyms for public split into groups?

Because public carries 4 recorded senses and each has its own set of substitutes. A single flat list would put words from unrelated meanings side by side with nothing to tell them apart, which is exactly how a writer picks the wrong one. The grouping comes from WordNet's synsets, not from an editorial judgement of ours.

Does this page cover every sense of public?

It covers the 3 senses that carry a synonym, antonym, broader or narrower term. The remaining 1 sense has none recorded, so it is left off a thesaurus page and shown in full on the word page instead.

Where do the synonyms for public come from?

From Princeton University's WordNet, a lexical database maintained by lexicographers since 1985. A synonym here means a word form that shares a synset with this word — a set of forms interchangeable in one recorded context. Nothing on this page is generated by a language model.

Other views of public

• Full entry for publicAll 4 senses, with examples, usage labels, syllables and pronunciation.
• Rhymes for publicWords matching from the last stressed vowel onward, grouped by syllable count.
• Thesaurus homeHow WordNet synsets work, and the collections built for synonym work.