Polis

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈpɒ.lɪs/

Definitions

1. A self-governing city-state in ancient Greece, typically consisting of an urban center and surrounding countryside, functioning as an independent political unit
2. An independent ancient Greek city-state comprising an urban settlement and its adjoining territorial region that operated as a sovereign political entity
3. A self-contained ancient Greek community organized around a central city that governed itself as a distinct political unit within its local territory

Etymology: The Greek word "polis" originally meant a fortified town or hilltop stronghold, and only later came to mean the self-governing city-state that defined ancient Greek political life. Its root reaches back to a Proto-Indo-European base *tpelH-, and in Greek it also gave rise to words for city-dwellers and citizenship. English borrowed it directly from Ancient Greek as a learned term for those independent communities, so the word describes a political unit rather than just a town. A striking twist is that English has a second, unrelated life for the same sound. In Scots, "polis" was an alternative form of "police," and English took that Scots word, which descends from the same Greek root through Old French and Latin, and it became a doublet of "police," "policy," and "polity." Those words all trace back to the idea of civic order and governance that the Greek city-state embodied.

Synonyms: city, town