Posse

How to spell posse

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce posse

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does posse mean?

1. nounAn informal group of friends, companions, or associates who go around together.
2. nounA body of people summoned by a sheriff or officer to help enforce the law or pursue a suspect.

Posse in a sentence

• She arrived at the party with her usual posse of college friends.

• The sheriff deputised a posse to track down the escaped prisoner.

• The manager brought his whole posse of advisers to the meeting.

• In the old western, the marshal rode out with a posse at dawn.

Where does posse come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Posse comes directly from the Latin verb posse, meaning 'to be able' or 'to have power', the same root that gives us 'potent', 'possible', and 'power'. In medieval legal Latin it appeared in the phrase posse comitatus, literally 'the power of the county', the body of able-bodied men a sheriff could legally summon to keep the peace or pursue a fugitive. English law adopted this concept, and by the seventeenth century 'posse' was used on its own to mean such a summoned force. The word travelled to the American frontier, where the sheriff's posse became a fixture of cowboy life and later of Western films. In the late twentieth century it loosened into informal slang for any tight-knit group of friends or associates. Note that the double 's' and the final '-e' both survive straight from the Latin spelling.

How the word is built

• posse (Latin: to be able, power), shortened from the legal phrase posse comitatus (the force of the county)