Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Police
/pəˈliːs/noun
The civil force responsible for keeping order and enforcing the law.
The Greek roots
πόλις
pólis
city, city-state
Literally: “the running of a city”
Follow a root:πόλις11 words
The story of the word
πολιτεία meant citizenship and the whole business of civil administration, and that is what police meant in English for two centuries: public order, street lighting, drains, the general management of a town. The uniformed body is late, coming in with the Marine Police on the Thames in 1798 and Peel's Metropolitan force in 1829, whose men London called Peelers and then bobbies. The same πόλις gives politics, metropolis and cosmopolitan, and the acropolis is simply the high part of town.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Middle French → English
- First recorded
- 1530s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
politicspolicymetropoliscosmopolitanacropolis
In a sentence
The police took a statement at the door and left within ten minutes.