census

plural censuses · plural censusses · plural proscribed rare censi

1. countableuncountableAn official count or enumeration of members of a population (not necessarily human), usually residents or citizens in a particular region, often done at regular intervals.

   1 more example

   As you know, the Imperium has never been able to take a census of the Fremen. Everyone thinks that there are but few wandering here and there in the desert. My Lord, I suspect an incredible secret has been kept on this planet: that the Fremen exist in vast numbers- vast- and it is they who control Arrakis.

   1984, 43:03 from the start, in Dune (Science Fiction), spoken by Reverend Mother Ramallo, →OCLC

2. countableuncountableThe people being treated in a healthcare facility, clinic or program.
3. countableuncountableCount, tally.

   In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included ...

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 7, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

4. countablehistoricaluncountableA type of tax levied by feudal lords on peasants.
5. countableuncountablecellular automataA count of the number of individual patterns within a larger pattern, most often the ash of a soup or a methuselah.

present singular third person censuses · present singular third person censusses · participle present censusing · participle present censussing · participle past censused · past censused · participle past censussed · past censussed

1. transitiveTo conduct a census on.

   Each page of the schedule was crossruled with 8 lines, capable of censussing 8 individuals.

   1893, Census of India, 1891, volume 23, page 347

   1 more example

   Indeed, none of the recorded characteristics of buildings nor their location affected our counts of breeding Sparrows, which appeared to be distributed rather homogeneously across the urban areas we censused.

   2008, Pierandrea Brichetti et al., “Recent declines in urban Italian Sparrow Passer (domesticus) italiae populations in northern Italy”, in Ibis, page 179, column 2

2. intransitiveTo collect a census.

   2 more examples

   My initiation to waterfowl censussing took place in the early days of the A.W.E., as it is familiarly known, when I served as a junior to one of the ablest of the Witwatersrand pioneers, Royce Reed. The method used must remain one of the three basic methods of Transvaal waterfowl censussing, although it has certain inherent limitations.

   1965, Fauna & Flora, page 46

   For 14 individuals, eight censusses per daily period were performed within two weeks (32 censusses per individual), each time recording the coordinates of location. The territories of the individuals were defined as the area defended successfully against conspecifics by agonistic and/or non-agonistic behaviour, as described by Wickler (1969) and Nelissen (1976). The locations of the territories were determined from censussing; their sizes were estimated by behavioural observations.

   1995, Netherlands Journal of Zoology, volume 45, page 390