Adjective

(en adjective)

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

* 2011 , Sandra Laville, The Guardian , 18 Apr 2011:

Earlier this month Godwin had to make a public apology to the family of Daniel Morgan after the collapse of a £30m inquiry into his murder in 1987.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-28, author=(Joris Luyendijk)

, volume=189, issue=3, page=21, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Our banks are out of control , passage=Seeing the British establishment struggle with the financial sector is like watching an alcoholic […].  Until 2008 there was denial over what finance had become. When a series of bank failures made this impossible, there was widespread anger, leading to the public humiliation of symbolic figures.}}

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

* 2010 , Adam Vaughan, The Guardian , 16 Sep 2010:

A mere 3% of the more than 1,000 people interviewed said they actually knew what the conference was about. It seems safe to say public awareness of the Convention on Biological Awareness in Nagoya - and its goal of safeguarding wildlife - is close to non-existent.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-05-17, author=George Monbiot, authorlink=George Monbiot

, title=Money just makes the rich suffer, volume=188, issue=23, page=19 , magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) citation , passage=In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. […]  The public realm is privatised, the regulations restraining the ultra-wealthy and the companies they control are abandoned, and Edwardian levels of inequality are almost fetishised.}}

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

* , chapter=22

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=From another point of view, it was a place without a soul. The well-to-do had hearts of stone; the rich were brutally bumptious; the Press, the Municipality, all the public men, were ridiculously, vaingloriously self-satisfied.}}

* 2004 , The Guardian , Leader, 18 Jun 2004:

But culture's total budget is a tiny proportion of all public spending; it is one of the government's most visible success stories.

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

* 2011 , David Smith, The Guardian , 10 May 2011:

Some are left for dead on rubbish tips, in refuge bags or at public toilets.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author=(Jonathan Freedland)

, volume=189, issue=1, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Obama's once hip brand is now tainted , passage=Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.}}

(of a company) Traded publicly via a stock market.

Adjective

(en adjective)

Having no validity, "null and void"

insignificant

* 1924 , Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove :

In proportion as we descend the social scale our snobbishness fastens on to mere nothings which are perhaps no more null than the distinctions observed by the aristocracy, but, being more obscure, more peculiar to the individual, take us more by surprise.

absent or non-existent

(mathematics) of the null set

(mathematics) of or comprising a value of precisely zero

(genetics, of a mutation) causing a complete loss of gene function, amorphic.