policeman
Pluralpolicemen
- 1A member of a police force, especially a male officer.
The policeman on the corner gave us directions to the train station.
Several policemen were called in to break up the brawl.
Similarofficer, constable, patrolman
Note
Built from police plus -man, the word keeps that suffix in its plural, policemen. The suffix is also why it leans male, and why many speakers now prefer the neutral police officer for anyone in the role. It pairs easily with a particular duty: JG Ballard's Super-Cannes (2000) has two traffic policemen remounting their motorcycles.
- 2In ice hockey, a player whose job is to deter and answer aggressive play by the opposing team, protecting teammates through physical confrontation.
The coach sent out his policeman to answer the other team's late hit.
As a policeman, he spent more time in the penalty box than near the goal.
Similarenforcer
Note
Hockey borrows the officer's job: this player keeps order on the ice by making sure rough play against teammates gets answered. The word is interchangeable with enforcer. Harari and Ominsky's Ice Hockey Made Simple (2002) sets the two side by side: "A team may have a policeman or enforcer." Like the law-enforcement sense, it is about deterrence, so opponents think twice before a cheap hit.
- 3A glass rod capped at one end with rubber, used in gravimetric analysis to dislodge solid residue from glassware.
The technician scraped the precipitate free with a policeman before filtering it.
A rubber-tipped policeman lets you recover every trace of solid clinging to the flask.
Note
Gravimetric analysis measures a substance by weighing it, so any precipitate left clinging to the glass becomes an error in the result. The rubber tip is what lets a chemist scrape the walls clean and transfer the whole sample. In the lab you scrape, dislodge or recover residue with a policeman. Outside it, a phrase like rubber-tipped policeman keeps the word from being read as an officer.
- 4Any of the skipper butterflies belonging to the genus Coeliades.
The collector identified the specimen as a policeman by its broad, sturdy wings.
Policemen are strong, rapid fliers, darting between flowering shrubs faster than most butterflies.
Note
Skippers form the butterfly family Hesperiidae, stout-bodied insects with a quick, darting flight, and Coeliades is one genus within it. Policeman is the English common name for its members, alongside the Latin genus name. The plural is the same irregular policemen as the officer, so a sentence needs wings, flowers or a net to show which one is meant.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from "police" combined with the suffix "-man".