folk

UK/fəʊk//foʊk/

folk noun: a people; a tribe or nation; the inhabitants of a region, especially the native inhabitants. Also the ellipsis of folk music.

Noun

folk (countable and uncountable, plural folks)

(archaic, countable) A people; a tribe or nation; the inhabitants of a region, especially the native inhabitants.
- The organization of each folk, as such, sprang mainly from war.1878-1880, John Richard Green, History of the English People
- We thus arrive at a most unexpected imbroglio. The French have become a Germanic folk and the Germanic folk have become Gaulish!1907, Race Prejudice, Jean Finot, page 251
(collective, plural) People, persons.
- There were a lot of folk in the streets.
- Young folk, old folk, everybody come / To our little Sunday School, and have a lot of fun.
(collective, plural, usually) One’s relatives, especially one’s parents.
- I need to call my folks back home.

Adjective

folk (not comparable)

Of or pertaining to the inhabitants of a land, their culture, tradition, or history.
Of or pertaining to common people as opposed to ruling classes or elites.
Of or related to local building materials and styles.
Believed or transmitted by the common people; not academically or ideologically correct or rigorous.
- folk psychology; folk linguistics
- Americans are not libertarians in the Cato Institute sense of the word, but they are folk libertarians in this sense of impulsive behaviour, which is a feature of American life that anyone who wants to govern the United States, Democratic or Republican, has to be aware of.2025 April 28, Ross Douthat, Nick Adams, “Condition of America”, in New Left Review, number 152, →ISSN

Proper noun capitalized: Folk

Folk (plural Folks)

A surname.

Also used as

folk is also the ellipsis of folk music.

folk meaning in Arabic and Vietnamese

folk in Arabic

of or related to local building materials and styles; not imported — see also vernacular: شَعْبِيّ šaʕbiyy

folk in Vietnamese

of or related to local building materials and styles; not imported — see also vernacular: dân

Examples of folk in a sentence

We got the folks at the Detroit plant to come out too.
Folks in our neighborhood come from every walk of life, prince and pauper, investor and janitor.
They played a medley of favorite folk songs as an encore.

All 40 example sentences with folk

Forms of folk

Noun
plural	folks
alternative form (dialectal)	vok
alternative form (dialectal)	volk
alternative form (dialectal)	volge
alternative form (dialectal)	volke
Proper noun
plural	Folks
alternative form	Vokes

Plural of folk: folks

Origin of folk

From Middle English folk, from Old English folc, from Proto-West Germanic *folk, from Proto-Germanic *fulką, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₁-gós, from *pleh₁- (“to fill”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Foulk, West Frisian folk, Dutch volk, German Low German and German Volk, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish folk, Faroese and Icelandic fólk. Doublet of volk.

* As a German surname, variant of Volk (“people, tribe”). * As an English surname, variant of Foulk, related to the noun folk, thus cognate with the above.

Phrases with folk

51 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with folk

42 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about folk

What does folk mean?: Folk means a people; a tribe or nation; the inhabitants of a region, especially the native inhabitants.
What is folk in Arabic?: Folk in Arabic is شَعْبِيّ (šaʕbiyy). See Folk meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is folk?: Folk can be a noun, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce folk?: Folk is pronounced /fəʊk/ (UK).
What is the plural of folk?: The plural of folk is folks.

Words near folk in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: folk (page history and authors); Folk (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-folk.ogg.

Cite this entry: “folk.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/folk. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.