Word.ws English Dictionary

five-o

five-o noun: the police.

Noun (1)

five-o (uncountable)

  1. (US street slang) The police.
    • Five-oh caught me, now I'm going to the mountains / Said good-bye to my girl, my lawyer and accountants1989, “Car Thief”, in Paul's Boutique, performed by Beastie Boys

Noun (2) capitalized: Five-O

Five-O (uncountable)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of five-o.

Forms of five-o

alternative form5-O
alternative formfive-oh
alternative form5.0
alternative form5O
alternative formFive-O

Origin of five-o

From the police procedural television series Hawaii Five-O (first aired in 1968), so named because it is set in Hawaii, which is the 50th U.S. state.

Questions about five-o

What does five-o mean?
Five-o means the police.
What part of speech is five-o?
Five-o is a noun.

Words near five-o in the dictionary

  1. five-leaved ivy
  2. five-legged
  3. five-minute hypothesis
  4. five-nine
  5. five-nines
  6. five-o
  7. five-o'clock shadow
  8. five-o'clock shadows
  9. five-of-a-kind
  10. five-oh
  11. five-over-one

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: five-o (page history and authors); Five-O (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-five-o.ogg.

Cite this entry: “five-o.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/five-o. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.