Residents

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈɹɛzədɪnts/

Definitions

1. People who make their home in a specific locality or environment
2. Individuals who dwell in a designated area or neighborhood
3. Persons who inhabit a certain location or community

Etymology: Residents came into English from Latin through Anglo-Norman French, and its Latin root is a plain physical image: "resideō" meant "to sit back" or "remain behind," built from "re-" (back) and "sedeō" (to sit). The sitting was literal before it became a matter of living somewhere. A person who settled in one place and stayed there was simply one who had sat down and not moved on. Medieval English kept the word in its general sense of dwelling or remaining, and the plural form "residents" follows the same pattern. The noun is one of several English doublets of the same Latin source, alongside "resiant" and "rezident," which show how the word arrived in more than one shape. The most unexpected twist comes from medicine. Hospital physicians of the nineteenth century were called residents because they lived in the hospital dormitories, which is the same sitting-in-place idea applied to a job. The espionage sense of a station chief came much later, borrowed from Russian "rezidént."

Synonyms: inhabitants, occupants

Antonyms: nonresidents, visitors