# census

Pronunciation: say "SEN-suhs" /ˈsɛnsəs/

## Noun

1. An official count of the members of a population, not necessarily human, usually the residents or citizens of a particular region, and often carried out at regular intervals.
   - Simple: An official count of the people, or sometimes animals, living in a place, often repeated at set times.
   - _The latest census showed that the city's population had grown by nearly ten percent._
   - _Rangers took a census of the elk herd before setting this year's hunting limits._
2. A count or tally of things, not necessarily an official one.
   - Simple: A count of how many things there are in a group.
   - _Scholars have compiled a census of every surviving copy of the first edition._
   - _A rough census of the guests told us we would run short of chairs._
5. A kind of tax that feudal lords levied on their peasants.
   - Simple: A tax that poor farmers in the past had to pay to their lord.
   - _Peasants on the estate owed the lord a yearly census on top of their labor._
   - _Bad harvests left many villagers unable to pay the census that year._
6. A count of the separate patterns within a larger pattern, most often the ash of a soup or a methuselah.
   - Simple: A count of how many small patterns are found inside a bigger pattern.
   - _A census of the ash from a million random soups showed which objects turn up most often._
   - _Once the methuselah finally stabilized, the census counted twenty-four separate objects in its debris._

## Verb

3. To carry out a census of a population or an area.
   - Simple: To count all the people or animals in a group or place.
   - _Field biologists census the breeding birds on each plot twice a season._
   - _Officials censused the refugee camps to plan food deliveries._
4. To gather the figures that make up a census.
   - Simple: To do the work of counting for a census.
   - _Survey teams census at dawn, when the birds are most active._
   - _After years of censusing on the wetlands, he could tell every duck by its call._

## Origin

Borrowed from Latin cēnsus, from cēnseō; compare censor.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/census (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).