police

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The governmental department charged with the regulation and control of the affairs of a community, now chiefly the department established to maintain order, enforce the law, and prevent and detect crime.
2. n. A body of persons making up such a department, trained in methods of law enforcement and crime prevention and detection and authorized to maintain the peace, safety, and order of the community.
3. n. A body of persons having similar organization and function: campus police. Also called police force.
4. n. Police officers considered as a group.
5. n. Regulation and control of the affairs of a community, especially with respect to maintenance of order, law, health, morals, safety, and other matters affecting the public welfare.
6. n. Informal A group that admonishes, cautions, or reminds: grammar police; fashion police.
7. n. The cleaning of a military base or other military area: Police of the barracks must be completed before inspection.
8. n. The soldiers assigned to a specified maintenance duty.
9. v. To regulate, control, or keep in order with or as if with a law enforcement agency.
10. v. To make (a military area, for example) neat in appearance: policed the barracks.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Public order; the regulation of a country or district with reference to the maintenance of order; more specifically, the power of each state, when exercised (either directly by its legislature or through its municipalities) for the suppression or regulation of whatever is injurious to the peace, health, morality, general intelligence, and thrift of the community, and its internal safety. In its most common acceptation, the police signifies the administration of the municipal laws and regulations of a city or incorporated town or borough by a corps of administrative or executive officers, with the necessary magistrates for the immediate use of force in compelling obedience and punishing violation of the laws, as distinguished from judicial remedies by action, etc. The primary object of the police system is the prevention of crime and the pursuit of offenders; but it is also subservient to other purposes, such as the suppression of mendicancy, the preservation of order, the removal of obstructions and nuisances, and the enforcing of those local and general laws which relate to the public health, order, safety, and comfort.
2. n. An organized civil force for maintaining order, preventing and detecting crime, and enforcing the laws; the body of men by whom the municipal laws and regulations of a city, incorporated town or borough, or rural district are enforced. A police force may be either open or secret. Au open police is a body of officers dressed in uniform, and known to everybody; a secret police consists of officers whom it may be difficult or impossible to distinguish from ordinary citizens, the dress and manners of whom they may think it expedient to assume, in order that they may the more easily detect crimes, or prevent the commission of such as require any previous combination or arrangement. See detective, constable.
3. n. In the United States army, the act or process of policing (see police, v., 2): a kind of fatigue duty: as, to go on police; to do police.
4. n. A civil police having a military organization. Such are the French gendarmerie, the sbirri of Italy, and the Irish constabulary.
5. n. In Scotland, one of a body elected by the ratepayers to manage police affairs in burghs.
6. To watch, guard, or maintain order in; protect or control by means of a body of policemen: as, to police a district; to police the inland waters of a country.
7. To clean up; clear out; put in order: as, to police the parade-ground.

Wiktionary

1. v. transitive To enforce the law and keep order among (a group).
2. v. transitive To patrol an area.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A judicial and executive system, for the government of a city, town, or district, for the preservation of rights, order, cleanliness, health, etc., and for the enforcement of the laws and prevention of crime; the administration of the laws and regulations of a city, incorporated town, or borough.
2. n. That which concerns the order of the community; the internal regulation of a state.
3. n. The organized body of civil officers in a city, town, or district, whose particular duties are the preservation of good order, the prevention and detection of crime, and the enforcement of the laws.
4. n. (Mil.) Military police, the body of soldiers detailed to preserve civil order and attend to sanitary arrangements in a camp or garrison.
5. n. The cleaning of a camp or garrison, or the state � a camp as to cleanliness.
6. v. To keep in order by police.
7. v. (Mil.) To make clean.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the force of policemen and officers
2. v. maintain the security of by carrying out a patrol