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I learned at school that "police" is a plural noun. But there are many different police. When we talk about secret police, military police, and riot police, can we say 3 polices?

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    Three police forces. Commented Sep 1, 2020 at 13:08
  • three police departments, in different cities. Commented Sep 1, 2020 at 18:24

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You are correct that the noun "police" is treated as a plural.

Uncountable?

It isn't a typical mass noun. If it were, we could say things like "not much police" and "only a little police", like we can with "salt", "mud", "rice", "rain", etc. Instead, we say things like "many police" and "few police", like with any other plural noun.

Plural

Longman's A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Quirk et al., 1985) refers to "police" and "people" as "unmarked plural nouns".

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002) refers to "police" as an "uninflected plural-only noun". Such words are said to be "quasi-count nouns" because they cannot be used with low-number numerals. Hence, we can't say "four police", whereas we can say "two hundred police".

"Polices"

To refer to multiple police forces, you could say "types of police", "kinds of police", or "police forces" (but the regular or civilian police may itself consist of multiple forces, e.g. different forces for different localities, and so "types of police" may be clearer).

In at least some varieties of English, we sometimes see "polices" used to mean multiple police forces, as in "The polices of various states are cooperating".

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  • Thanks; this explains it much better than my source did, so I’ve deleted my answer. +1 Commented Sep 1, 2020 at 19:44
  • You may want to check this more thoroughly. Commented May 6, 2025 at 15:19
  • @EdwinAshworth Sorry, but would you be able to offer any further clues or hints about where I've gone wrong here? Thanks. Commented Jun 28, 2025 at 8:28
  • 'Police' is almost always reckoned to be a non-count noun. Using the superior test (accepting of numeral or strict equivalent, such as 'a dozen'), as '6 / 17 / a dozen police' are unacceptable, one can see why. However, 'police' is used with large round numerals, so we see '6000 police' say. This is discussed here, and CGEL use the term 'quasi-count noun' for such very rare occurrences. In '6000 police', 'police' is a count usage, of singular form but taking ... Commented Jun 28, 2025 at 13:35
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    a plural-form verb, and obviously referring to a countable referent (6000 police officers). // But also, 'police' has been countified to mean 'police force'. Now the plural form is available: 'The polices of the various states confirmed that they will be cooperating on drug-related crime.' Here, 'polices' is obviously of plural form (ending in the typical s); it also takes a plural verb form, can have a numeral inserted (so is a 'count' usage), and refers to a countable referent (here, 2 constabularies). For an overview, see ... Commented Jun 28, 2025 at 13:40

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