Policeman

How to spell policeman

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce policeman

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does policeman mean?

1. nounA male member of a police force.

Policeman in a sentence

• A policeman directed traffic around the flooded junction.

• The witness gave her statement to a policeman at the scene.

Where does policeman come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word joins two old elements. The first, 'police', came into English in the 1500s through French, which had taken it from the late Latin politia meaning 'civil administration' or 'the state'. That Latin word was borrowed from the Greek politeia, meaning 'citizenship' or 'government', which was built on polis, the Greek word for a city or city-state. For a long time 'police' referred broadly to public order and regulation rather than to a uniformed force, and the modern organised body of officers is largely an eighteenth and nineteenth century development. The second element, '-man', is plain native English from Old English mann, meaning a person or adult male, and the compound 'policeman' was coined in the early 1800s as that profession formalised. The spelling trap sits in the unstressed middle: the 'ice' is pronounced 'eece', not 'ice', and the final '-man' reduces to a soft 'mun' in speech, so writers must remember the silent-feeling vowels they cannot clearly hear.

How the word is built

• police (from Greek polis: city, hence civil administration)
• -man (adult male, agent noun)