popularity
- 1The state of being widely liked or favored by people in general.
The mayor's popularity soared after the new park opened.
Streaming services have surged in popularity over the past decade.
Similarfavor, approval, appeal, acclaim
Oppositeunpopularity
- 2The quality of being suited or pleasing to common, poor, or unrefined people.
The sermon's plain style gave it a popularity among the laboring poor that finer oratory never won.
So this Gallant, labouring to avoid Popularity, falls into a habit of Affectation, Ten thousand times hatefuller than the former.
1600, Ben Jonson, Every Man Out of His HumourNote
An older, disapproving use in which appealing to the common crowd was a fault rather than an achievement. When Ben Jonson in 1600 has a gallant laboring to avoid popularity, the man is fleeing vulgarity, not fame, and he lands in affectation instead. In earlier texts, read it as low appeal rather than being widely liked; modern readers would simply misunderstand it.
- 3Something intended to gain the favor of the common people; cheap crowd-pleasing matter; claptrap.
His speech was mere popularity, all flattery and hollow promises to the mob.
The senator scorned popularity, refusing to bait the crowd with empty slogans.
Note
Here the quality becomes an object: a trick, phrase or circumstance put forward to win the crowd. Because it names things, it can be counted. Francis Bacon writes in 1597 of "popularities" and circumstances that "sway the ordinary judgment." Claptrap is the nearest modern equivalent and the word to reach for now. This one belongs to older prose.
Less common meanings
- 4Public feeling; the general passion or shared sentiment of the people.
The war stirred a popularity that swept through every town and village.
A little time be allowed for the madness of popularity to cease.
1834, George Bancroft, History of the United StatesNote
A collective feeling rather than a verdict on any one person: the passion of a public at large. George Bancroft's History of the United States speaks of "the madness of popularity," a fever that needs time to cool. When historical prose uses the word for a mood sweeping through a population, read it as public sentiment, not as someone's being well liked.
- 5The practice of seeking to win over the common people and gain their goodwill.
Cato (the younger) charged Muraena, and indicted him in open court for popularity and ambition.
1603, Plutarch, MoraliaNote
The Latin idea behind the word survives most directly here: popularitas meant "an effort to please the people," an action rather than a result. It could be a charge in court. Philemon Holland's 1603 translation of Plutarch's Moralia has Cato indict Muraena "for popularity and ambition," setting the two side by side as vices. The sense is obsolete, and today one would speak of courting the crowd.
- 6The quality of being cheap, inferior, or vulgar.
The furniture's popularity, its gaudy cheapness, betrayed the owner's lack of taste.
Critics noted the popularity of the gilded decor, all flash and no real quality.
Note
The disparaging edge of appeal to the common people sharpened into a plain judgment of quality: what pleases the vulgar is itself cheap and inferior. Here the word describes the thing, not its audience, so an archaic writer could fault a design's popularity without implying anyone liked it. A modern reader would hear praise, so leave this meaning to the old texts.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with popularity, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.
Origin
Formed from "popular" plus the suffix "-ity," ultimately from Latin "popularitas," meaning "an effort to please the people."