Policewoman

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A woman who serves as an officer in a police force
2. A female member of law enforcement responsible for maintaining public order
3. A woman employed by the police to enforce laws and protect the community

Etymology: Policewoman is a plain compound: "police" joined to "woman", with no clever story behind it. The first half comes from French "police", borrowed from Middle French and tracing back through Latin "politia" to the Greek "politeia", meaning citizenship or the organisation of a city-state, which itself grew from "polis", the city. The second half is the Old English "wīfmann", a combination of "wīf" (woman) and "mann" (person), which over time shrank into the modern "woman". The compound is much more recent than its parts. It was formed in English by joining the two existing words, and it describes a role that only became common as women entered police forces in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Because it is a straightforward combination, the word's meaning is simply the sum of its two halves: a woman who works in the police.

Synonyms: officer, law enforcer