public concern
5
3.2
- noun
:
preocupación pública
- In the United States, public concern about the environment
There's an increasing sense that governments and the elite ignore public concerns.
- There's an increasing sense that governments and the elite ignore public concerns.
- Was kind of the peak zeitgeist for public concern around the debts and deficits.
Examples
-
Public concern about issues tends to follow media coverage of those issues rather than any changes in the real world.
-
Every spring, we organize this conference to address an issue of broad public concern through the lens of gender.
-
During the past two decades, physical punishment of children has become an issue of public concern rather than a private family affair.
Academic text (1997) -
The environment did not become a topic of public concern until the mid-to-late 1960s.
Academic text (1992) -
By contrast, that legal risk is absent when the issue involves matters of public concern, like taxpayer-funded contracts.
Blog text (30) -
Speaker, as the numbers infected by the coronavirus grow, the level of public concern naturally grows with us.
-
Another important trend not to be overlooked is the rising public concern over coal's environmental and health impacts.
Blog text (25) -
There is considerable public concern about poverty, but proposals for dealing with it still come mostly from antipoverty elites.
Academic text (1991) -
As a result of public concern, the provincial government of Chubut in 1997 moved tanker lanes 40 km farther offshore.
Academic text (2008) -
The recent protests highlight the growing public concern about climate change and its effects on future generations.
Synonyms
51
3.4
A problem that affects many people in a society
Antonyms
How Important
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'an issue important to the wider community' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'public' (the people collectively) with 'concern' (an issue or matter of importance or worry). This adjective+noun composition is common and cross-linguistically predictable, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
The phrase public concern comes from the image of people meeting in town squares: public means the people and concern means a shared 'worry'. So, it now refers to a problem or matter that affects many people.