poll

SayPOHLUS/poʊl/UK/pəʊl/

26 meanings of poll

1
nouncountable
A survey of people, usually analyzed statistically to gauge wider public opinion.
The latest poll suggests the two candidates are nearly tied.
Analysts released a poll showing rising concern about housing costs.
Similarsurvey
Note
The modern sense sits at the end of a long road from the body. Middle English pol meant the scalp or pate, from a Germanic word for a round object, a head, and counting heads became counting opinions. A survey of opinion gauges what people think. That separates it from a formal vote, which settles the question rather than measuring it.
2
nouncountable
A formal round of voting held to settle which option has the most support.
Parliament conducted a poll to settle the disputed leadership.
Members cast their ballots in a poll to choose the next chairperson.
Similarvote, election
3
nouncountable
The outcome of a vote, expressed as the total number of votes recorded.
The candidate topped the poll with over half the votes.
A heavy turnout pushed the poll to record numbers.
Similarvote, tally, count
4
nouncountable
The place where people cast their ballots, usually referred to in the plural as the polls.
By state law, every poll must stay open until the evening.
Long lines formed at the polls across the city.
5
verbtransitive
To take and record the votes of a body of voters.
The returning officer polled the entire electorate by noon.
Election staff poll voters and log every ballot carefully.
6
verbintransitive
To cast one's vote at an election.
Many residents polled before the morning rush.
Eligible voters may poll at any local station.
Similarvote
Oppositeabstain
7
verbtransitive
In computing, to query a device such as a networked computer or printer for its status, usually again and again.
The controller polls every sensor in turn to read its status.
Software can poll the device until it reports that it is ready.
Similarquery, ping, check
Note
Computing borrowed the canvasser's habit of going round and asking. A hub or program that polls checks each device in turn to see whether it is there and ready, and it keeps asking, so the verb usually implies repetition. Its object is the thing queried: a hub polls the department's computers, and software polls a printer. What comes back is a status.
8
verbtransitive
To cut the hair of an animal or other creature.
Shepherds traditionally poll their flocks at the start of the warm season.
She polled the pony's mane with a pair of shears.
Similarshear, clip, trim, crop
Note
Older English polled people as freely as animals. The King James Bible of 1611 says of Absalom "when he polled his head". Thomas North's Plutarch has mourners who "polled themselves" and clipped their horses' and mules' hair as well. In texts like these, polled means cropped or shorn: a haircut, not a vote.
9
adjective
Bred to be naturally without horns; hornless.
Many ranchers prefer poll breeds because hornless animals injure each other less.
The herd is entirely poll, the result of careful breeding.
Similarhornless
Oppositehorned
Note
A breeder's adjective, the natural counterpart of dehorning. To poll an animal is to take its horns off; a poll breed never grew them. The word lives in breed names, where it is capitalized: Poll Hereford, Poll Shorthorn, Red Poll cows. The Monthly Review in 1757 already sets "the Horned sort" against "Poll Sheep".
10
verbtransitive
To dehorn an animal by cutting off or otherwise removing its horns.
Ranchers often poll their cattle to make them safer to handle.
The breeder polled the herd before transport.
Similardehorn

11
verbtransitive
To remove the top or end of something; to clip or lop it.
Gardeners poll the willows each year to encourage new growth.
The crew polled the dead tops off the old trees.
Similarpollard, lop, top, prune, trim
12
verbtransitive
To cut off or remove by clipping, shearing, mowing, or cropping.
Workers poll the overgrown grass before the festival.
She polled the dead leaves from the border.
Similartrim, cut, clip, crop, mow
13
verbtransitive
To register or deposit a vote, or to draw out votes or voters.
The independent candidate polled nearly forty percent of the vote.
Smaller parties rarely poll enough votes to win a seat.
Similarwin, receive, garner, get
14
verbintransitive
To receive a particular result or share of votes when measured in a survey or election.
Third-party candidates rarely poll above ten percent in national surveys.
The measure polled strongly in coastal counties but lagged inland.
Similarscore
Note
This is the intransitive verb of results, and it almost always wants an adverb: candidates poll well, poll badly, poll strongly. Joanne McEvoy writes in 2008 that Robert McCartney "polled badly in the six constituencies he contested". Without the adverb the sentence feels unfinished. With a number as its object, as in polled a hundred votes, it becomes the vote-winning transitive verb.
15
nouncountable
The broad, blunt end of an axe or hammer head, opposite the blade or striking face.
She tapped the chisel using the poll of her hatchet rather than the blade.
Blacksmiths often harden the poll so it can double as a hammer.
Similarbutt
16
nouncountable
The head, especially the scalp or crown of the head where hair normally grows.
The groom gently stroked the horse's poll just behind its ears.
A bruise had formed across his poll where the beam struck him.
Similarscalp
Note
The oldest meaning now survives mostly in veterinary medicine, where the poll is the crown of an animal's head. Used of people it has grown rare, though fiction kept it alive. Stevenson's doctor in Treasure Island bares "his own close-cropped black poll", and O. Henry gives a manager a "priceless polished poll". Armor keeps a trace of it too, in the hinged poll plate of a helmet.
17
verbtransitive
To request mock or trial votes from a person or group, as in a rehearsal of an actual ballot.
The campaign staff poll volunteers to rehearse the count before election night.
Organizers polled the delegates in a mock ballot to gauge support.
Similarsurvey, canvass
18
nouncountable
A gathering of people regarded as a head count: a crowd, mob, or assembly counted by number.
The recruiting officer recorded the poll of able men in each parish.
A noisy poll of onlookers pressed against the barriers.
Similarcrowd, throng, headcount
Note
Shakespeare's head count: a crowd reckoned by how many heads are in it. In Coriolanus the citizens boast "We are the greater poll". In All's Well a muster amounts to "fifteen thousand poll", with the noun left unchanged after a number, much as in fifty head of cattle. It is the bridge between the head itself and the vote.
19
verbtransitive
To cut or shave a surface smooth and even, making a straight edge without notches or indentation.
The scrivener polled the document's edge, leaving a clean straight margin.
Bookbinders poll the leaves so the block sits perfectly even.
Similartrim
Note
A lawyer's sense, and a precise one: to poll a document is to cut its edge straight rather than notched. A deed so cut is a polled deed, or deed poll, made by a single party. A deed between parties was instead cut in a toothed line, which is why it was called indented.
20
verbtransitive
To enter persons one by one in a list or register, especially to enroll them for taxation.
Assessors poll each resident and record them in the parish register.
They polled the townsfolk to enroll them for the new levy.
Similarregister, enroll, list, enumerate
21
verbtransitive
To impose a tax upon a person or community.
Medieval kings would poll their subjects to fund foreign campaigns.
The council polled landowners to pay for the new road.
Similartax
22
verbtransitive
To pay a fixed sum as one's own individual tax.
Every adult male would poll a fixed sum to the treasury.
She polled her tax early to avoid the crowd.
Similarpay
Note
The head returns as a unit of tax: to poll was to pay the levy owed for one's own person. Dryden's Juvenal (1693) mentions "the man that polled but twelve pence for his head". The phrase for his head shows plainly how the payment was reckoned, linking it back to the head itself.
23
SayPOLUS/pɑl/UK/pɒl/
nouncountable
A parrot kept in the home as a pet.
Grandmother's poll greeted every visitor with the same shrill phrase.
The shopkeeper kept a poll on a perch behind the counter.
Similarparrot
Note
A homograph with its own story: this poll is perhaps just Polly cut short, the name so often given to pet parrots. Although it looks identical, it has nothing to do with heads, haircuts or voting. It is best read as a fond household name for a talking bird rather than a term for any kind of parrot.
24
SayPOLUS/pɑl/UK/pɒl/
noundatedUKcountable
A university student who aims only at an ordinary degree rather than competing for honors; a passman.
Unlike his ambitious roommate, the poll sought only a plain degree.
Many a poll left Cambridge with a modest pass and few regrets.
Note
A Cambridge word with a Greek pedigree. It comes from hoi polloi, "the many": the poll was one of the crowd who read for a plain pass degree while others sat for honors. It is British and now dated, and passman is its plain synonym. Despite appearances, it has no link to the opinion survey or to heads.
25
nouncountable
The European chub, a freshwater fish also known as the pollard.
An angler landed a hefty poll from the deep pool below the bridge.
The poll feeds near the surface on warm summer evenings.
Similarchub
26
verbobsolete
To plunder, strip, or extort from someone, taking their money or possessions by force.
Which pols and pils the poore in piteous wize
1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
they slew Julius Caesar, who neither pilled nor polled the country but only was a favorer and suborner of all them that did rob and spoil, by his countenance and authority.
1579, Thomas North, Plutarch's Parallel Lives
Note
An obsolete verb of rapacity that rarely traveled alone: it came paired with pill in the jingle pill and poll. North's Plutarch (1579) says Caesar "neither pilled nor polled the country". Spenser's Faerie Queene (1596) speaks of one "which pols and pils the poore". Modern readers meet it only in such old texts, and it is not a live synonym for extort.

Practice

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Origins

Meanings 1–22, 25–26

From Middle English 'pol', 'polle' ('scalp, pate'), related to Middle Dutch words for 'top' or 'head', and traceable back through Proto-Germanic *pullaz ('round object, head, top') to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to blow, swell'. The sense 'collection of votes' is first recorded in 1625, from the notion of counting heads.

Meaning 23

Perhaps a shortening of Polly, a common name for pet parrots.

Meaning 24

From Ancient Greek πολλοί (polloí, 'the many, the masses'), as in 'hoi polloi'.