Politico

How to spell politico

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce politico

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does politico mean?

1. nounA politician, especially one seen as a shrewd or self-serving operator.

Politico in a sentence

• The seasoned politico knew exactly which donors to call before the vote.

• Reporters described the mayor as a ruthless politico who never forgot a slight.

Where does politico come from?

Language of origin: Italian

Politico arrived in English in the early nineteenth century as a slightly mocking borrowing from Italian and Spanish, in both of which politico means simply 'political' or 'a politician'. The root traces back through Latin politicus to the Greek politikos, meaning 'of citizens or the affairs of the state', which was built on polites 'citizen' and ultimately polis, the Greek word for a city or city-state. English already had the dignified word 'politician', so politico was adopted with a knowing, faintly disparaging tone, often used for a wily operator or a backroom dealer rather than a statesman. The same polis root powers a whole family of English words, including 'police', 'policy', 'metropolis' and 'cosmopolitan'. The spelling trap is the foreign ending: writers expect an English word to finish '-ician' or '-ical', so the bare Italian '-ico' on a single 't' can feel unfamiliar.

How the word is built

• polit- (from Greek politikos: of citizens/the state)
• -ico (Italian/Spanish adjective and noun suffix)