habitant
noun
1ˈhabɪt(ə)nt archaic An inhabitant.The country dwellers and habitants of market towns and traditional villages keep away from the large towns and cities unless absolutely necessary....
- This being the case, those habitants of areas outside the golden southwestern sphere are entirely reliant upon their own vehicles.
- The company is responsible for treating all the waste water of a city with over 16 million habitants.
2abiːˈtɒ̃ [often as modifier] An early French settler in Canada (especially Quebec) or Louisiana: the habitant farmhouses of old Quebec...
- When tobacco prices dropped, Chesapeake planters suffered; when French subsidies lagged or European fashions changed, Quebec habitants descended toward subsistence.
- In 1713, when Britain acquired Acadia, they were some 2,300 French habitants living on seigneuries, under the manorial system which France established in her colonies.
- The lives of many French North American habitants were disrupted by eighteenth-century geopolitical changes, but none more than the Acadians.
Origin
Late Middle English (in sense 1): from Old French, from habiter, from Latin habitare 'inhabit'.