poll
verb/pəʊl/
/pəʊl/
Verb Forms
| present simple I / you / we / they poll | /pəʊl/ /pəʊl/ |
| he / she / it polls | /pəʊlz/ /pəʊlz/ |
| past simple polled | /pəʊld/ /pəʊld/ |
| past participle polled | /pəʊld/ /pəʊld/ |
| -ing form polling | /ˈpəʊlɪŋ/ /ˈpəʊlɪŋ/ |
- [transitive, intransitive] to receive a particular number of votes in an election
- poll something They polled 39 per cent of the vote in the last election.
- + adv./prep. The Republicans have polled well (= received many votes) in recent elections.
- [transitive, usually passive] poll somebody to ask a large number of members of the public what they think about something synonym survey
- Over 50 per cent of those polled were against the proposed military action.
- The film was voted top by critics polled by ‘Movie’ magazine.
Word OriginMiddle English (in the sense ‘head’): perhaps of Low German origin. The original sense was ‘head’, and hence ‘an individual person among a number’, which led to the sense ‘number of people ascertained by counting of heads’ and then ‘counting of heads or of votes’ (17th cent.).
Check pronunciation:
poll