(hoiˌ pə-loiˈ)
noun The common people; the masses.
Usage Note: Hoi polloi is a borrowing of the Greek phrase
hoi polloi, consisting of
hoi, meaning “the” and used before a plural, and
polloi, the plural of
polus, “many.” In Greek
hoi polloi had a special sense, “the greater number, the people, the commonalty, the masses.” This phrase has generally expressed this meaning in English since its first recorded instance, in an 1837 work by James Fenimore Cooper.
Hoi polloi is sometimes incorrectly used to mean “the elite,” possibly because it is reminiscent of
high and mighty or because it sounds like
hoity-toity. • Since the Greek phrase includes an article, some critics have argued that the phrase
the hoi polloi is redundant. But phrases borrowed from other languages are often reanalyzed in English as single words. For example, a number of Arabic noun phrases were borrowed into English as simple nouns. The Arabic element
al- means “the,” and appears in English nouns such as
alcohol and
alchemy. Thus, since no one would consider a phrase such as “the alcohol” to be redundant, criticizing
the hoi polloi on similar grounds seems pedantic.
