These words refer to the citizens of a country or a region when considered collectively. People , the most general, is usually neutral in implication; it can be used simply as the plural of person , as a reference to all the inhabitants of a given place, as a reference to public opinion, or as a way to distinguish between a group and its leaders: only two people in the whole bar: the people of New Guinea; wondering what people would think; politicians who deliberately mislead the people . Populace is even more consistently neutral than people and is more restricted in meaning, referring almost exclusively to the inhabitants of a given place: Nearly the entire populace turned out to hear him. It is often used in statistical accounts and has consequently gained a technical flavour. The word comes from an Italian pejorative and is sometimes used in this older way: too grand to be seen travelling in buses with the populace .

All the rest of these words, with varying degrees of intensity, are pejorative ways of referring to common people or the lower classes, attributing to them vulgarity, ignorance or gullibility, and implying in the user of these words a conscious or unconscious snobbery. Masses and hoi polloi are least pejorative of these, for differing reasons. Masses specifically suggests the lower classes: concocting their tawdry sentimentality for the masses . Left-wing political thinkers frequently use the word in a positive or outraged sense: the exploited masses . This association with simple human virtues has blunted the pejorative force of the word. Hoi polloi refers more to the ordinary citizen than to class stratification. Careful writers remember that hoi itself is the Greek definite article: candidates seeking the vote of hoi polloi . An extraneous article is usually added: swelling beer with the hoi polloi .

Mob in this context implies that the general public can be considered as an ignorant unity joined together by fear or anger, one easily swayed by demagogic special pleading: wit and grace too refined to be appreciated by the mob . Herd is more negative than mob and stresses conformity, a gullible willingness to be led, or frantic but meaningless activity: an elegant taste in clothing that set him apart from the herd ; specious appeals for peace that won widespread support from the herd ; the nine-to-five herd of commuters.

Rabble is the most pejorative of all these words; it suggests a disorganized low-class, self-seeking group of ignorant people . When it is applied widely to whole groups of people , it expresses extreme contempt for democratic ideals: explanations of tax reforms that were good enough for the rabble . For this reason, a demagogue is often called rabble -rouser.