habitancy

[ hab-i-tn-see ]

noun

, plural hab·i·tan·cies.

1. the act or fact of inhabiting; inhabitancy.
2. the total number of inhabitants; population.

Word History and Origins

Origin of habitancy¹

First recorded in 1785–95; habit(ant) ¹ + -ancy

Example Sentences

Allyce Wood's "Habitancy" uses string to create human and canine shadow figures on the walls of a vacant room, while Ryan Molenkamp's "Strain" seemingly internalizes the rolling/spiky shapes of Seattle's hills and broadcast towers in a conventional black-and-white painting, only to have them escape the painting's bounds and become 3-D structures wrapping their way around both the inside and outside of the house.

From Seattle Times

The cotton counties, which are the counties of densest coloured habitancy, exemplify this fact with great clearness.

From Project Gutenberg

They then caught their horses and moved their families to the West Fork; and when they visited the places of their former habitancy for the purpose of collecting their stock and carrying it off with their other property, scarce a vestige of them was to be seen,––the Indians had been there after they left the cave, and burned the houses, pillaged their movable property, and destroyed the cattle and hogs.

From Project Gutenberg

The Creator has not altogether effaced his own image in any region of human habitancy.

From Project Gutenberg

The little villages, so unlike our own, and yet so admirably fitted for peasant comfort, the homesteads embedded in plantations of willows, the neatness of every thing round the farm-houses, and even the sleekness of the cattle, which seemed by their tameness to form a part of the habitancy—all were objects of constant remark on our march; and we could easily comprehend the horror with which the arrival of a French commissariat must strike these comfortable burghers.

From Project Gutenberg