Word.ws English Dictionary

policespeak

policespeak noun: the jargon or formal language used by the police.

Noun

policespeak (uncountable)

  1. The jargon or formal language used by the police.
    • In the passage above, two of the terms used by the interviewing officer are typical of legalistic/pseudo-legalistic policespeak. The officer uses the term "vehicle" even after the details of the vehicle type have been established, […]2008, John Gibbons, M. Teresa Turell, Dimensions of Forensic Linguistics, page 75

Proper noun capitalized: Policespeak

Policespeak

  1. A constructed language for police and emergency service cooperation at the Channel Tunnel, using a limited vocabulary drawn from French and English.

Origin of policespeak

From police + -speak.

Questions about policespeak

What does policespeak mean?
Policespeak means the jargon or formal language used by the police.
What part of speech is policespeak?
Policespeak can be a noun or a proper noun.

Words near policespeak in the dictionary

  1. policer
  2. policers
  3. polices
  4. polices one's brass
  5. polices up
  6. policespeak
  7. policeware
  8. policewear
  9. policewoman
  10. policewomen
  11. policework

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: policespeak (page history and authors); Policespeak (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.

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