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police Definition

po·lice (pə lēs′)

noun

  1. Archaic the regulation within a community of morals, safety, sanitation, etc.; public order; law enforcement
  2. the governmental department (of a city, state, etc.) organized for keeping order, enforcing the law, and preventing, detecting, and prosecuting crimes
    1. a governmental force, or body of persons, established and maintained for keeping order, etc.
    2. a private organization like this security police at a college
    3. the members of any such force
    4. Informal those who act as self-appointed guardians of morality, propriety, style, etc.: usually somewhat disparaging the fashion police, the language police
  4. ☆ U.S. Army
    1. the work or duty of keeping a camp, post, etc. clean and orderly
    2. the soldiers charged with such duty kitchen police

Etymology: Fr < LL politia, administration of the commonwealth (in L, the state) < Gr politeia, the state, citizenship < politēs, citizen < polis, city < IE *pel-, fortress (> Sans pūr, town), orig., filled wall, special use of base *pel-, to flow, fill > full

transitive verb -·liced′, -·lic′·ing

  1. to control, protect, or keep orderly with or as police or a similar force to police the streets
  2. ☆ to make or keep (a military camp, post, etc.) clean and orderly: often with up

police Synonyms

police

n.

police force, law enforcement body, FBI, police officers, policemen, custodians of the law, detective force, military police, M.P.'S*, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, RCMP*, Mounties*, the law*, the fuzz*, the heat*, the man*, canine corps, New York's Finest*.

police Synonyms

police

v.

watch, control, patrol; see guard 2.

police Usage Examples

Preposition: on

  • horseback: By this time the police on horseback were looking perturbed.

Converse of subject

  • raid: Then she compares a bar being raided by the police to an attack by skinheads.

Adjective modifier

  • armed: Late one night, in December 1988, Idah was visiting a neighbor's home when armed police stormed the house.
  • secret: Workers couldn't organize themselves to fight against their exploitation at work for fear of the secret police.
  • full-time: You first sit have learned the of community cards is primarily a. Rick tudor engaged full-time monument police you first sit time to form.
  • Serb: Albanian informer for Serb police, on plans to murder Albanians and commit atrocities that could be blamed on the KLA.
  • Iraqi: Iraqi police say there was a large crowd of people near the station when the vehicle exploded.

Converse of object

  • notify: Report a minor crime online A service to notify the police of some types of minor, non-emergency crime.
  • tell: But The Ghost sank the ship and escaped, so there will be no witnesses who might tell the police about him.
  • assist: FAIR case workers have been assisting the police and already two dossiers on a series of murders in the South Armagh area.
  • call: The book could almost be called a police procedural / courtroom drama.
  • mount: From all quarters foot and mounted police appeared on the scene.

Modifies a noun

  • officer: Monument police officer no limit texas players also tend.
  • station: You will also see a police station on the left.
  • force: We believe police forces would rather see a stick on legible plate than a small plate which cannot be read.
  • custody: Such conditions make further deaths in police custody an inevitability.
  • constable: The warrant also authorizes a police constable to open locked premises.
  • investigation: Firstly, it has a supervisory role over the police investigation of complaints.

Noun used with modifier

  • riot: More than half of these protests ended in the deployment of riot police or the army.
  • monument: Monument police officer no limit texas players also tend.
police Quotes

   A spectre is haunting Europeöthe spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holyalliance to exorcise this spectre; Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police spies.

—Marx, Karl Heinrich

If Her Majesty's Government be really desirous of seeing a well-conducted community spring up in these Colonies, the social wants of the people must be considered† For all the clergy you can despatch, all the schoolmasters you can appoint, all the churches you can build, and all the books you can export, will never do much good without what a gentleman in that Colony veryappropriately called 'God's police'öwives and little childrenögood and virtuous women. 213

—Chisholm, Caroline ne¤  e Jones

In the western hemisphere, the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.

—Roosevelt,Theodore

We best avoid wars by taking even physical action to stop small ones. Everybody knows that the United Nations isnot ina position to dothat† We must facethe fact that the United Nations is not yet the internal equivalent of ourown legal systemand rule of law.Police action must be to separate the belligerents and to prevent a resumption of hostilities.

—Eden, Sir (Robert) Anthony, 1st Earl of Avon

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeplyas they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.

—Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair

If the individual isno longer to be sovereign, if the police can pick him up whenever they do not like the cut of his jib†we enter a new regime.

—Douglas, (George) Norman

The police dog of American fiction, except that his hatred isnottheresultof mere crabbednessbut of aneye that sees too deep for comfort.

—Fadiman, Clifton

All thistime [San Francisco, from1955] Irealized we were involved as a community with a historical change of consciousness and some kind of cultural revolution† I thought it wasreally insomerespects a contest between further liberation or1984 authoritarianism, police state; that it was creeping police state or creeping socialism- libertarianism.

—Ginsberg, Allen

Reading isn't an occupation we encourage among police officers. We try to keep the paperwork down to a minimum.

—Orton,Joe originally John Kingsley

Even if we take marriage at its lowest, even if we regard it as no more than a sort of friendship recognised by the police.

—Stevenson, Robert Louis