Word of the Day

: October 10, 2008

posse

noun PAH-see

What It Means

1 : a large group often with a common interest

2 : a body of persons summoned by a sheriff to assist in preserving the public peace usually in an emergency

3 : a group of people temporarily organized to make a search (as for a lost child)

4 : one’s attendants or associates

posse in Context

"On the Saturday morning we used to watch anxiously for the usual signs of activity and when we saw a large barrel of beer being escorted up the streets by a posse of small boys, we knew that all was well." (Edmund Barber, Country Life, October 12, 1951)

Did You Know?

"Posse" started out as a technical term in law, part of the term "posse comitatus," which in Medieval Latin meant "power or authority of the county." As such, it referred to a group of citizens summoned by a sheriff to preserve the public peace as allowed for by law. "Preserving the public peace" so often meant hunting down a supposed criminal that "posse" eventually came to mean any group organized to make a search or embark on a mission. In even broader use it can refer to any group, period. Sometimes nowadays that group is a gang or a rock band but it can as easily be any group -- of politicians, models, architects, tourists, children, or what have you -- acting in concert.