posse
(ˈpɒsiː)
Also 8 possee.
[a. L. posse to be able, have power, avail, in med.L. as n., power, armed force (1246 in Du Cange); in scholastic terminology, potentiality, capability of being. In sense 1 short for posse comitatus.]
I. 1. Law. = posse comitatus.
| [1314–15 Rolls of Parlt. I. 327/1 Mandetur Majori et Balliuis [Oxonie] quod insequantur cum toto posse suo transgressores.] 1691 New Discov. Old Intreague vi, Who early for the Princes Cause began: The Posse rais'd. 1720 Mrs. Manley Power of Love (1741) 281 When Mrs. Ursula was gone down in order to raise the Possee, if there should be occasion. 1781 S. Peters Hist. Connecticut 108 The polite New-Yorkers..sent the posse of Albany to eject the possessors. 1901 Westm. Gaz. 5 Dec. 11/1 A pitched battle was fought..at Rockhill, Missouri, between the Sheriff's posse and the miners on strike. |
b. A force armed with legal authority; a body (of constables).
| 1697 W. Dampier Voy. (1699) 483 They need not have sent an armed Posse for me. 1753 Scots Mag. June 305/2 A posse of constables..appeared. 1800 Colquhoun Comm. Thames iii. 93 A posse of Marine Police Officers receiving information... On attempting a search [etc.]. 1884 Graphic 11 Oct. 371/1 An extra posse of policemen. |
c. transf. A ‘force’, a strong band, company, or assemblage (of persons, animals, or things).
| 1645 Fuller Good Th. in Bad T. (1841) 13 All the posse of hell cannot violently eject me. 1678 Butler Hud. iii. ii. 1166 No longer able To raise your Posse of the Rabble. 1697 Collier Ess. Mor. Subj. ii. (1703) 85 Then you have raised the whole posse of mechanism. 1728 Swift Let. Publisher Dublin Wkly. Jrnl. 14 Sept., With these two single considerations I outbalanced the whole posse of articles that weighed just now against me. 1841 Miss Sedgwick Lett. Abr. II. 71 Found her flying from a posse of cock-turkeys. 1892 Stevenson Across the Plains vii, I ran..and beheld a posse of silent people escorting a cart. |
II. From use in scholastic Latin.
‖ 2. The fact or state of being possible; possibility, potentiality (opposed to esse): esp. in phr. in posse opposed to in esse.
| 1583 Greene Mamillia Wks. (Grosart) II. 229 She which is vicious in her youth may be vertuous in her age: I graunt indeede it may be, but it is hard to bring the posse into esse. 1592 ― Def. Conny Catch. Wks. (Grosart) XI. 44 To strippe him of all that his purse had in Esse, or his credyt in Posse. 1659 Baxter Key Cath. xxxix. 282 If the question [of sin] be only of the posse, and not of the act. 1756 Gray Lett. Wks. 1825 II. 193 You are not however to imagine that my illness is in esse; no, it is only in posse. 1877 Reade Woman Hater v, They existed, as the school⁓men used to say, in posse, but not in esse. |
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Add: [I.] [1.] d. slang (chiefly U.S.). A gang of Black (esp. Jamaican) youths involved in organized or violent and often drug-related crime. Cf. *yardie n. (and a.).
| 1986 Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica) 22 Dec. 39/6 Police have identified the largest and most feared Jamaican gangs as the ‘Shower Posse’..and the ‘Spangler Posse’. 1987 Boston July 108/3 Enforcement agents blame Jamaican posses for some 500 homicides and..gun-running. 1988 Daily Tel. 14 Mar. 6/3 Jamaican gangs known as ‘posses’ have emerged as the leading killers in America's increasingly violent underworld of drug users and dealers. The ‘posses’ have turned up in many major cities. 1989 Observer (Colour Suppl.) 25 June 29 Egbulefu..was a Nigerian conman and drugs dealer who for {pstlg}150 sold an East London ‘posse’ of five black Jamaicans a batch of ‘formula’, or fake cannabis. |