police state
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.20 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A political entity, usually a state, whose government exercises strict and repressive control of its people.
Derogatory
Example Sentences
- "You didn't know there is […] an active campaign, propaganda and otherwise, […] against all kinds of security procedures on the ground that they are all police state methods and all interfere with individual rights?"
- "[Mo:] But out there in the real world they're bombing abortion clinics... holding Nazi and KKK rallies... trying to quarantine people who might have AIDS. They're making secret weapons deals to illegally fund so-called "freedom fighters" and calling it "the Lord's work"!! We're living in a Protestant police state […]"
- "A gun up in our faces and they never gave a reason / The writing's on the wall, the politics are fake / Its clear to me we're livin' in a police state […] The prisons are for profit, its society's mistake / How macabre, we been living in a police state"
Etymology
Likely a calque of German Polizeistaat adopted following the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 and the ensuing Demagogenverfolgungen, culminating in the crackdown of liberal and anarchical movements popular in the 1840s during the German revolutions of 1848–1849. Equivalent to police + state.