{"id":7174,"date":"2012-06-22T10:14:51","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T10:14:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=7174"},"modified":"2012-06-22T10:14:51","modified_gmt":"2012-06-22T10:14:51","slug":"gendarmes-et-policiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=7174","title":{"rendered":"Gendarmes et policiers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday there was some discussion of the police at the French Conversation Group &#8211; one of the members is a former policeman. We use the word <em>policier<\/em>, but later I remembered that another French word for policeman is <em>gendarme<\/em>, and it suddenly dawned on me that <em>gendarme<\/em> probably comes from <em>gens d\u2019armes<\/em> (armed man). I checked this today and it&#8217;s right. It&#8217;s not something I&#8217;ve really thought about before, but when I did think about it, it seemed so obvious. Do you find that with words sometimes?<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/dictionary.reverso.net\/english-french\/policeman\">Reverso<\/a>, French country police officers are called <em>les gendarmes<\/em>, but those in towns are called <em>les agents de police<\/em> or <em>les policiers<\/em>. A community police officer is <em>un \u00eelotier<\/em> and a traffic police officer is <em>un agent de la circulation<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>According to the OED and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/index.php?term=policy\">Online Etymology Dictionary<\/a>, the word police comes from the Middle French <em>police<\/em> (public order, administration, government), from the Latin <em>pol\u012bt\u012ba<\/em> (citizenship, political organization, government), which is also the root of policy, politics, politican, etc. and comes from the Ancient Greek <em>\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03b9\u03c4\u03b5\u03af\u03b1<\/em> (politeia &#8211; citizenship, government, administration) from <em>\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03af\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2<\/em> (polites &#8211; citizen) from <em>\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03af\u03c2<\/em> (polis &#8211; city, state), from the Proto-Indo-European <em>*p(o)lH- <\/em> (enclosed space, often on high ground).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday there was some discussion of the police at the French Conversation Group &#8211; one of the members is a former policeman. We use the word policier, but later I remembered that another French word for policeman is gendarme, and it suddenly dawned on me that gendarme probably comes from gens d\u2019armes (armed man). I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,118,10,15,45,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-greek","category-language","category-latin","category-proto-indo-european","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}