Demographical

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Relating to the statistical study of populations including their size, structure, distribution, and changes over time
2. Pertaining to the analysis of population characteristics such as age, gender, income, education, and ethnicity
3. Concerning data and trends involving human populations and their social and economic attributes across different regions or groups

Etymology: "Demographical" is "demographic" with the adjective-forming suffix "-al" added, and the base word is a coinage of the 1850s. The French physician Achille Guillard introduced "démographie" in his 1855 book "Éléments de statistique humaine, ou démographie comparée," built from Greek "dēmos," meaning "people" or "common people," and "-graphia," "writing" or "description." Guillard's sense was a description of human populations, so the term began as a name for a field of study before it described a type of data. English took the base word "demography" from French in the mid-19th century, and "demographical" followed as a derivative. The longer form has long run alongside the shorter "demographic," which is now the more common adjective in English, though both are accepted and used in scholarship and official writing.

Synonyms: statistical, population-related