Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A member of the French national police organization constituting a branch of the armed forces with responsibility for general law enforcement.
- n. Slang A police officer.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Originally, in France, a man-at-arms; a knight or cavalier armed at all points and commanding a troop; afterward, a member of a company or corps of cavalry; a cavalryman: sometimes also used for soldier in general.
- n. In France, since the Revolution, one of the corps of national police, a body organized, uniformed, and drilled like soldiers, and considered, in a sense, a privileged corps of the French army: also used for a policeman of a similar corps in some other European countries. See gendarmerie, 2.
Wiktionary
- n. A member of the gendarmerie, a military body charged with police duties.
- n. Policeman.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. One of a body of heavy cavalry.
- n. An armed policeman in France.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a French policeman
Etymologies
- French, from Old French gent d'armes, gendarme, sing. of gens d'armes, mounted soldiers, men-at-arms : gens, people, men (from Latin gentēs, pl. of gēns, clan; see genə- in Indo-European roots) + de, of (from Latin dē; see de-) + armes, pl. of arme, weapon; see arm2.
Examples
“Shall I call a gendarme, Monsieur, and have him search for your nurse?”
“When Rougon heard the word gendarme, he thought he understood her.”
“He finished with a gesture of supreme disgust, as if friendship with a gendarme were the basest of crimes.”
“Cuba has served as a kind of gendarme regarding the drug traffic in the”
“However, Castro said, not only have we not done this; on the contrary, we have become a kind of gendarme in the Caribbean.”
“He said the head of the Ivorian gendarme service, the director of police, the chief of staff of the armed forces and the chief of staff of the army have all offered their services to Ouattara.”
“As this image of the fire station got me rousted by the local gendarme.”
“The instant that you proceed past the sign, an ill-tempered gendarme will materialize, full of Gallic wrath.”
“The major contenders in the 2005 Tour de France rode over the legendary Col du Galibier 8,678 feet under the watchful eye of a gendarme in this classic Tom Moran shot from the VeloNews archives.”
Flashback Gallery: The Col du Galibier in the 2005 Tour de France
“The local gendarme is an Inspector Clouseau-style clot, complete with all the pratfalls and befuddled ideas, but maybe even he will be able to solve the mystery with a little help from his clever young niece, Le Chat.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gendarme’.
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Mountaineering
mountaineering terms:
some of these more unusual ones came from the book Nanda Devi: Exploration and Ascentmoraine, cirque, couloir, arete, topee, gendarme, jat, dotial, bhotia, coolies, sahib, bharal and 9 more...
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Big Menu
Everything that gets eaten or contemplated for consumption (generally food until we learn otherwise).
Prolagus The Arma dei Carabinieri is one of the Italian armed forces, together with Esercito Italiano, Marina Militare and Aeronautica Militare. They also have a police force role together with Polizia di Stato, Guardia di Finanza (although bilby makes fun of them!), Polizia Penitenziaria, and Corpo Forestale dello Stato.
You're right, gendarmi (pl. of "gendarme") refers to Carabinieri only. Jan 5, 2009
dontcry When I lived in Italy, we called the police: carabiniere. Jan 5, 2009
Prolagus 3) an Italian policeman. Jan 5, 2009
hernesheir (n): (food) 1. at one time a popular name in France for pickled herring.
2. a popular name for certain very dry and hard Swiss sausages that have a certain resemblance to herrings. cf. charcuterie Jan 4, 2009