Politician/Police
Speaking of things that have become obsolete, the terms “policeman” and “policewoman” have been almost universally abandoned in favor of “police officer,” but all three forms denote a person who is an official agent of a law enforcement (“police”) agency. Interestingly, the word “constable,” formerly applied to police officers in Britain and elsewhere, comes ultimately from the Latin “comes stabuli,” meaning literally “Count of the stable,” i.e., head groom in a stable. The term later was applied to the chief household officer in royal palaces, then to military commanders, and finally, in the 15th century, to law enforcement authorities.
Page 2 of 2 | Previous page
Simon:
April 24th, 2012 at 12:12 pm
The book in question may be from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. I know I read that derivation in one of them. A good bit of the humor in them comes from fanciful etymologies turned pun.
taz:
May 5th, 2013 at 1:34 pm
man at arms was the pratchett book and he clears it up at end when patrician asks Carrot if he knows where the word politician comes from.
Lardiel:
May 8th, 2013 at 8:00 pm
I’m sorry but this article is not exactly correct. For a latin language speaker (as i am) it is easyer to find the etymology of a word derrived from greek ar latin. And the “English word “police” was imported from the Middle French branch of the “polis” family tree, where “police” meant essentially the same thing as our modern English word “policy””,but that french “police” is still derrived from the greek “polis”. So both policeman and politician are from: “Greek “polites,” meaning “citizen””.
Patricia L. Perez:
March 8th, 2015 at 2:27 pm
I would like to be able to share the policeman, police and Policy one ~ on FaceBook but do not see a way to share it. Thank You
toppo:
June 26th, 2016 at 3:03 pm
The old greek word for polis means city. I’ts that simple
Bridget:
April 14th, 2018 at 10:32 am
I’m another Terry Pratchett fan that stumbled on to this site after reading Men at Arms.
The Watch’s current motto is “Fabricati diem, pvnc”. This is nonsense in Latin, and doesn’t actually mean “Make my day, punk”, although it looks as though it ought to; this is the nature of most “Latatian” in the books, and is not unusual. However, Fred Colon insists it means “To protect and serve”.
~ http://discworld.wikia.com/wiki/Ankh-Morpork_City_Watch
Latatian:
~ https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Latatian
List of Phrases, some seem legitimate to me but maybe they are Dog Latin.
~ http://discworld.wikia.com/wiki/Ankh-Morpork_City_Watch
The Word Detective site seems very useful. I don’t want to clutter the page with links. I do imagine hordes of readers researching the origin of politician after reading Men at Arms. Hopefully those readers will be able to end their search quickly and return to their Round World duties with haste … or maybe hasten back to the vibrant Discworld.