Politics

How to spell politics

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce politics

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does politics mean?

1. nounThe activities and debates associated with governing a country or area, especially the contest between parties for power.
2. nounThe use of influence, manoeuvring, and competing interests within an organisation.

Politics in a sentence

• She studied politics at university before joining the civil service.

• Office politics made the promotion decision more complicated than it should have been.

• Local politics shaped how the council spent its budget.

• She refused to play the politics that dominated the department.

Where does politics come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek politikos, meaning 'of or relating to citizens and the affairs of the city', which itself rests on polis, the Greek word for a city or city-state, and polites, meaning 'citizen'. The Greeks applied politika to the business of governing a community, and Aristotle famously titled a treatise with that very word. Latin adopted it as politicus, and it passed into English through Old French politique during the late Middle Ages. By the sixteenth century English writers were using 'politics' with the -ics ending that English attaches to fields of study and activity, much as in 'physics' and 'economics'. The same polis root still surfaces in 'police', 'policy', and 'metropolis', a useful reminder that the unstressed second syllable is spelled with an 'i' (pol-I-tics), not the 'a' that the schwa sound tempts writers toward.

How the word is built

• polit- (from Greek polites: citizen, from polis: city)
• -ics (noun suffix denoting a field or practice)