Other forms: policing
The police are the people in uniform who keep order and investigate crime. Call the police, the police arrived, a police officer.
It is a plural noun in British English — the police are investigating — and has no singular; you say a police officer or a policeman. Police force, police station, police car and police record are the standard compounds. As a verb, to police is to keep order in a place or over a rule: policing the borders, self-policing. Note the police in Britain, most of whom are unarmed, which is unusual internationally.
1nounpoliceThe people in uniform who keep order and investigate crime.~95%
“Someone broke into our car, so we called the police.”
2verbplaceTo keep order over a place or a rule.~5%
“The rule is impossible to police and everybody knows it.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 20 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
police is a force keeping order.
Greek politeia meant citizenship or the running of a city, from polis, a city. Police, policy, politics and politician all come from it, so the police are named after the city rather than after order.
Middle French
police
English, today
police
From Middle French police. From Middle French police, from Latin polītīa (“state, government”), from Ancient Greek πολιτεία. a doublet of policy and polis and polity.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA