Policing

How to spell policing

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce policing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does policing mean?

1. nounThe activity of maintaining public order and enforcing the law, especially as carried out by an organised force.
2. verbPresent participle of police: controlling, regulating, or keeping order over something.

Policing in a sentence

• noun

  The council reviewed the cost of community policing this year.

• verb

  Moderators spend hours policing the comments on the forum.

• noun

  Effective policing relies on the trust of local residents.

• verb

  The company is policing its own safety standards more strictly now.

Where does policing come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word descends ultimately from the Greek polis, meaning 'city' or 'city-state', the same root that gives us 'politics' and 'metropolis'. From polis the Greeks formed politeia, meaning 'citizenship' or 'the running of a state', which Latin borrowed as politia, broadly 'civil administration' or 'government'. This passed into Old French as police, where it came to mean public order and the regulation of a community, and English adopted the noun in the 1500s with that wider sense of orderly governance. Only in the eighteenth century did 'police' narrow to mean the organised civil force that enforces the law, and the gerund 'policing', formed by adding -ing, names the activity of that force; the silent e of 'police' is dropped before the suffix, which is the small spelling trap to remember.

How the word is built

• polic- (from Greek polis: city, state)
• -ing (gerund/present participle suffix)