PUBLIC • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Public

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/pˈəblɪk/ Listen

adjective

Public adj.

1.

Of or pertaining to the people; belonging to the people; relating to, or affecting, a nation, state, or community; opposed to private; as, the public treasury. "To the public good Private respects must yield." "He (Alexander Hamilton) touched the dead corpse of the public credit, and it sprung upon its feet."

2.

Open to the knowledge or view of all; general; common; notorious; as, public report; public scandal. "Joseph,... not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily."

3.

Open to common or general use; as, a public road; a public house. "The public street."

public act or public statute (Law), an act or statute affecting matters of public concern. Of such statutes the courts take judicial notice.

Public credit. See under Credit.

Public funds. See Fund, 3.

Public house, an inn, or house of entertainment.

Public law.

(a)

See International law, under International.

(b)

A public act or statute.

Public nuisance. (Law) See under Nuisance.

Public orator. (Eng. Universities) See Orator, 3.

Public stores, military and naval stores, equipments, etc.

Public works, all fixed works built by civil engineers for public use, as railways, docks, canals, etc.; but strictly, military and civil engineering works constructed at the public cost.

noun

Public n.

1.

The general body of mankind, or of a nation, state, or community; the people, indefinitely; as, the American public; also, a particular body or aggregation of people; as, an author's public. "The public is more disposed to censure than to praise."

2.

A public house; an inn. (Scot.)

In public, openly; before an audience or the people at large; not in private or secrecy. "We are to speak in public."

See images of 'Public'

Etymology of 'Public'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Public" Quotes from Famous Books

... field has been bought by a very rich man, and today is the last day that it will be open to the public." ...

— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi--Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini

... and worked early and late, turning out dainty blouses which far outshone Denys's creations and astounded her family. On Saturday mornings she gave up all her usual avocations, denied herself to the general public, and devoted her energies to the wash-tub and the ironing board, the result of which operations she proudly displayed in a pile of muslins which would have done credit ...

— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh

... was: 'Many years to my poor little Jeannie, and may the worst of them be past. No good that is in me to give her shall ever be wanting while I live. May God bless her.' How strange that this apostle of reticence should have such privacies as these laid open before the curious public within so ...

— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... life, however, within the precinct of his Hanseatic consulship, but had dispersed himself very promiscuously over the Continent, and had seen many cities, and the manners of many men—and of some women,— singing-women, I mean, in their public character; for the Consul, correct of life as of ear, never sought to undeify his divinities by pursuing them from the heaven of the stage to the purgatorial intermediacy of the coulisses, still less to the lower depth of disenchantment into which too many of them ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... Monthly Director, &c. (now in its sixth Edition:) I have received a great number of Letters relating to many Improvements that may be made to it, and am desired to publish them, in order to render my first Volume more compleat. And, as I find they will be of public Use, I shall begin with one concerning the Preservation of Flesh, Fowls and Fish from Putrefaction, or Stinking; which is too often the Case, in Summer-time, when it is rare to find any sweet Morsels, although they have undergone the Discipline of Salting. As for the common Notion, that ...

— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

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