What is the colloquial name for police in your country?

25 comments

1. There’s a bunch of them, depends a bit on your region I think and also age. Popo’s, juten, wouten, dienders, flikken, smerissen, I’m sure there’s more. Most aren’t exactly flattering and they’re not really used in neutral speech. Though the police did name their chat bot Wout lol. But in daily life most people just say politie.

2. There are two very common vulgar/condescending ones, can’t think of a neutral one off the top of my head.

   Purk(en) – (The) difficult (one). Also means female pig.

   Snut(en) – (The) snout

3. Baguettes (PL: bagiety); dogs (psy) – this one is obviously the most vulgar out of them; clay (gliny); Mr. Authority (panie władzo)

4. From soviet times we inherited a term “мусора” which may be loosely translated as “trashes”.

   From what I know, the it originated in inmate slang, but after USSR after Stalin acquitted many prisoners, the word penetrated vocabulary of regular citizens

   Edit: origin is wrong, check the next comment

5. In Spain I know “pasma”, “picoletos”, “maderos”.

   In Ireland I know the most common is “Gards” / “Guards” as a colloquial way of calling the Irish police (whose official name is “Garda Síochána)” or “Gardaí” in plural. Also heard the shades, but I don’t know why.

6. Flikken or Smurfen (although that last one is more applied to traffic cops I think).

7. I think the most widely spread one is ‘Kiberer’ but i have not a clue what its origin is.

8. Sbirri, piri, caramba, pullotti, depending on the corps. Sbirri is generic, caramba for Carabinieri, piri is for municipal police (from Vampiri, lot of road code fines from them, hence the name and contraction), pullotti is for Police.

9. “Milițian” or “Garcea” for low-level easily corruptable cops

10. Snuten (the snout), bängen, farbror blå (uncle blue)

11. A lot of young British people say “the feds”, which is directly imported from the US, and makes no sense because we’re not a federation and don’t have federal police…

12. Kifeljci, kifličarji (means croissaints), could be from the times of the Illyrian Provinces during Napoleon.

    Murja or murjaki, I heard this in Ljubljana, could be slang. Comes from the verb muriti which means to annoy, but is very close to moriti which means to murder.

    Their vehicle, the kombi wagon/car, the jail on wheels, is called kibla, but I also heard marica. Not sure where this comes from.

    There are probably other names, depending on the region and age of those you ask.

13. Casually you can use cops, coppers, the [old] bill, rozzers (not used much any more), bobbies (in scotland). The more offensive one is “the filth”, and pigs.

14. There are loads. Bobbies, cops, coppers, plod the polis, the filth, the rozzers, the bizzies

15. Švestky (plums, I think this is because of uniform color)

    Šmoulové (Smurfs, dtto)

    Chlupatý (hairy ones, somewhat archaic, based on hairy helmets of Austro-Hungarian cops)

    Flojdi (from english “Floyd” like in Pink Floyd, but I am not sure from where the inspiration comes)

    Poliši (just a colloquial shortened version of “policisté”)

    Poldové (dtto, almost friendly sounding)

    Policajti (colloquial version of “policisté”)

    Cajti (dtto, but shortened)

    Fízlové (“fízl” was usually a slang term for a secret policeman or informant, but is sometimes used also for police proper)

    Benga (devils, from Romani ethnolects)

    Kliftoni (based on Léon Clifton, a popular Chicago detective from Czech interwar period pulp novels)

    Specific types/departments:

    Empíci (MP, military police, sometimes also municipal police)

    Města patníky (city bollards,municipal police from the MP abbrev.)

    Esenbáci (from SNB – Sbor národní bezpečnosti/National security corps, communist name for police organization includin both secret and regular police)

    Mordparta (the murder party, slang term for criminal police team investigating murders)

16. An Garda Síochána (official name for the police “guardians of the peace” in english)

    Gardai
    Gards
    Shades (General use for people)
    Pigs (usually used by people who have been inconvenienced by the gards like getting caught with no car insurance, nothing major)
    One Garda, two NNNNNNARDAIIII (this is a irish grammar joke. Done on a comedy sketch show called the savage Eye. They made fun out of how gards all talk the same)

17. It’s μπάτσοι (batsoi). It’s considered derogatory and pretty rude in general. I don’t think there are other colloquial terms for them.

    There’s also a famous phrase/protester slogan that goes “μπάτσοι, γουρούνια, δολοφόνοι ” (cops, pigs, murderers) so, yeah it has negative connotations in general

18. In Italy: Sbirri, La pula, i pulotti, piedipiatti(though a bit old)

19. Lögga plural or Löggi singular.

    It’s like Cop or Coppar.

20. Kyttä, originally an old word meaning “sniper” (in the hunting sense). “Cop” gets usually translated to kyttä, so it’s a pretty neutral word. There are a few others that are more condescending/vulgar.

21. “Bullen” (bulls) is definitely used for cops. “Polente” is a somewhat antiquated expression which apparently stems from 19th century criminal slang and can’t really be translated.

22. Mostly _flikken_, popularized by a TV series of the same name that ran from 1999 to 2009.

23. Cucos, chui, moina are the ones I know for Portugal.

    You probably shouldn’t be using them in front of the cops if you’re in trouble with them.

    Then there’s “a guarda” which is a popular way to refer to GNR ( military-based police force). But idk of any names to refer to PSP ( public security police force) or PJ ( judiciary police – these are the ones that only investigate crimes like murders, human traffic and the sorts)…

    Edit: lots of Portuguese people living in France call the Gendarmerie “os genros da Maria” ( Maria’s siblings-in-law) because it’s phonetically quite similar and it’s kind of an inside joke.

24. Finland:

    There is “kyttä” which (and I had to AskJeeves to find the etymology) comes from Swedish word “skytte” (many Finnish terms, especially older ones have Swedish origin due to how we used to be part of Sweden) which means archer or shooter.

    Another word for police officer is “jepari” which is derived from slang in Stockholm that spread into Finland at some point.

    Then there is “paskalakki” which simply means “shit hat” and IIRC has to do with the old timey caps the police officers used to wear but DuckDuckgoing it did not confirm this.

    There is also “skoude” which is either from “scout” (no idea why) or evolved from “koukku” (hook) which was an older slang term for police.

    And finally “sinivuokko” which is the name of a certain blue flower and I guess that just refers to the blue uniforms of police.

25. We have a bunch of slang terms but they’re only used by teenagers and douchebags. An adult referring to a policeman as a “sbirro” sounds like a wannabe mafioso, it’s not really the same as “cop” in English which is also used by cops themselves and has no negative connotation (at least not anymore)