entry
poll
/pɔl/Head; vote tally; public survey
From Germanic poll (head).
from Proto-Indo-European *bew- (“to blow, swell”). Akin to Scots pow (“head, crown, scalp, skull”), Saterland Frisian...
from Proto-Indo-European *bolno-, *bōwl- (“orb, round object, bubble”)
from Proto-Germanic *pullaz (“round object, head, top”)
from Middle English pol, polle ("scalp, pate")
Word Ancestry
from Proto-Indo-European *bew- (“to blow, swell”). Akin to Scots pow (“head, crown, scalp, skull”), Saterland Frisian...
from Proto-Indo-European *bolno-, *bōwl- (“orb, round object, bubble”)
from Proto-Germanic *pullaz (“round object, head, top”)
from Middle English pol, polle ("scalp, pate")
This word started out looking at your skull, not at your ballot. In Middle English, pol or polle meant the head or scalp, which is why a poll tax was literally a head tax: one head, one payment. By the 1600s, English speakers were already counting “polls” as people, and by 1625 the word had slipped neatly into politics, where counting heads became counting votes. That little jump from skull to ballot box is wonderfully bureaucratic, the same kind of mind that turns a person into a number and then calls it democracy. If you want the ghost of the old meaning, just remember that every opinion poll is still, at heart, a head count.
The Story
This word started out looking at your skull, not at your ballot. In Middle English, pol or polle meant the head or scalp, which is why a poll tax was literally a head tax: one head, one payment. By the 1600s, English speakers were already counting “polls” as people, and by 1625 the word had slipped neatly into politics, where counting heads became counting votes. That little jump from skull to ballot box is wonderfully bureaucratic, the same kind of mind that turns a person into a number and then calls it democracy. If you want the ghost of the old meaning, just remember that every opinion poll is still, at heart, a head count.
Kin & Kindred
From 'poll'·head; top; person counted as one head
Derived Terms
English words from this root
Sources
Free Dictionary
Urban Dictionary
Wiktionary