Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A body of French gendarmes.
- noun Slang A group of police officers.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Formerly, in France, a body of cavalry, first organized under this name by Charles VII.; cavalry in general. The special corps of gendarmerie of the army were suppressed in 1778, excepting the Scotch company, the most ancient.
- noun The armed police of France, consisting of mounted and unmounted gendarmes, first organized in 1790 as a standing militia for the enforcement of law and the preservation of order.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The French police force; the body of gendarmes or gendarmes collectively.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
military body charged with police duties among the civilian population.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun French police force; a group of gendarmes or gendarmes collectively
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Examples
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Diplomats explained that several EU countries were expected to send "gendarmerie" - type effectives, because such forces are most suited to quick deployment.
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The gendarmerie is the elite paramilitary force of the Congo.
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Blue as the gendarmerie were the waves of the sea,
Good Taste Is the Worst Vice : Ange Mlinko : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation
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What is necessary now is to train and equip more Iraqi security forces, and we have proposed to train Iraqi gendarmerie, that is, military force.
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Next day little boys were scraping the village over like fowls in a farmyard, getting a chip 'ere an' a shaving there, an 'making themselves such a nuisance that there was talk of calling the gendarmerie out.
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Fully aware that he was regularly and systematically deceived by the ordinary officials, he formed a body of well-paid officers, called the gendarmerie, who were scattered over the country, and ordered to report directly to his Majesty whatever seemed to them worthy of attention.
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The U.S., which occupied Haiti for the next 19 years, disbanded the army and created a replacement called the gendarmerie or "garde," which fought alongside the Marines against Haitian guerrillas who opposed the U.S. presence.
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Francis I. had the advantage in artillery and in heavy cavalry, called at that time the gendarmerie, that is to say, the corps of men-at-arms in heavy armor with their servants; but his troops were inferior in effectives to the Imperialists, and Charles V. 's two generals, Bourbon and Pescara, were, as men of war, far superior to
A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 4
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Kılıç calling the gendarmerie first after his release by the PKK instead of the police has led to further suspicion about his links to the clandestine organization.
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"He called the gendarmerie the equivalent of 10 times a day, seven days a week, which suggests something abnormal going on," said plaintiff attorney Orhan Kemal Cengiz.
chained_bear commented on the word gendarmerie
"Gendarmerie, were a heavy cavalry formerly used in the French armies; the term formerly signified men in complete armour."
October 9, 2008