secret police

noun

: a police organization operating for the most part in secrecy and especially for the political purposes of its government often with terroristic methods

Examples of secret police in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
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As the line between arresting and kidnapping, official police and secret police, is blurred, we—citizen or noncitizen—are meant to be intimidated. Viet Thanh Nguyễn, Time, 28 Apr. 2025 In legalese mixed with intimations of personal pain, Bar lists Netanyahu’s attempts to turn the Shin Bet into a secret police protecting the prime minister personally rather than the nation. Gershom Gorenberg, The Atlantic, 25 Apr. 2025 Those of us who have lived in countries terrorized by a secret police force can’t shake a feeling of dreadful familiarity. M. Gessen, Mercury News, 5 Apr. 2025 Russia’s secret police may have the dubious honor of having invented transnational repression: beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, tsarist secret police infiltrated and harassed Russian political émigrés in France and Switzerland. Andrei Soldatov, Foreign Affairs, 20 Mar. 2025 See All Example Sentences for secret police

Word History

First Known Use

1823, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of secret police was in 1823

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Cite this Entry

“Secret police.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/secret%20police. Accessed 9 May. 2025.

Kids Definition

secret police

noun
: a police organization operating mostly in secrecy and especially for the political purposes of its government and often using methods of terrorists

More from Merriam-Webster on secret police

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