Middle English policie, pollecye "art or practice of government, system of government, commonwealth, organization or conduct of affairs, practical skill, prudence," borrowed from Anglo-French policie, pollecie "governance, system of government" (Middle French also, "a political organization, the state, conduct, behavior"), borrowed from Late Latin polītīa "citizenship, political organization, government" — more at

Note: The term is a doublet of ; see note at that entry.

Noun (2)

earlier police, pollecy (in the phrase police/pollecy of assurance, after French pollice d'assurance), borrowed from Middle French police, pollice "certificate, written proof," probably borrowed from Italian polizza, pollizza "receipt, promissory note," alteration of apodissa, appodissa (by absorption of initial a- by the definite article and shift of -d- to a lateral), borrowed from Medieval Latin apodixa, apodissa "receipt," borrowed from Middle Greek apódeixis, going back to Greek, "making known, proof," from apodeik-, stem of apodeíknymi, apodeiknýnai "to point out, make known, prove" + -sis -sis — more at apodictic

Note: The English variant with -cy is presumably assimilation to , ending in a familiar suffix; it appears to have displaced police at an early date. — Middle French police has also been taken as a loan from Old Occitan polissia, itself borrowed from Italian, or directly from Medieval Latin or Greek; the editors of Trésor de la langue française reject this on grounds of the location of the earliest citations. The shift of a dental to a lateral in (apodissa > polizza) is perhaps best explained as direct borrowing into Italian from vernacular Greek, where the dental would have been a voiced interdental fricative; as Italian lacked this sound, it was transferred as an -l- (compare the etymology of ). This alters somewhat the path of transmission in the etymology above, perhaps removing Medieval Latin as an intermediary.