people vs public

people

noun
  • Persons forming or belonging to a particular group, such as a nation, class, ethnic group, country, family, etc. 

  • A person's ancestors, relatives or family. 

  • The mass of a community as distinguished from a special class (elite); the commonalty; the populace; the vulgar; the common crowd; the citizens. 

  • A group of persons regarded as being employees, followers, companions or subjects of a ruler. 

  • Used as plural of person; a body of human beings considered generally or collectively; a group of two or more persons. 

  • One's colleagues or employees. 

verb
  • To inhabit; to occupy; to populate. 

  • To become populous or populated. 

  • To stock with people or inhabitants; to fill as with people; to populate. 

  • To interact with people; to socialize. 

public

noun
  • The people in general, regardless of membership of any particular group. 

  • A particular group or demographic to be targeted. 

adj
  • Able to be seen or known by everyone; open to general view, happening without concealment. 

  • Officially representing the community; carried out or funded by the state on behalf of the community. 

  • Traded publicly via a stock market. 

  • Open to all members of a community; especially, provided by national or local authorities and supported by money from taxes. 

  • Pertaining to the people as a whole (as opposed to a private group); concerning the whole country, community etc. 

  • Accessible to the program in general, not only to the class or any subclasses. 

How often have the words people and public occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )