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Polity   /pˈɑləti/   Listen
noun
Polity  n.  (pl. polities)  
1.
The form or constitution of the civil government of a nation or state; the framework or organization by which the various departments of government are combined into a systematic whole.
2.
Hence: The form or constitution by which any institution is organized; the recognized principles which lie at the foundation of any human institution. "Nor is possible that any form of polity, much less polity ecclesiastical, should be good, unless God himself be author of it."
3.
Policy; art; management. (Obs.)
Synonyms: Policy. Polity, Policy. These two words were originally the same. Polity is now confined to the structure of a government; as, civil or ecclesiastical polity; while policy is applied to the scheme of management of public affairs with reference to some aim or result; as, foreign or domestic policy. Policy has the further sense of skillful or cunning management.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Polity" Quotes from Famous Books



... among them—the Pope of Rome was the right one, a Pope outside of Rome was no Pope at all. Every human creature in the village was an Armagnac—a patriot—and if we children hotly hated nothing else in the world, we did certainly hate the English and Burgundian name and polity ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... in that good order, that deference and subordination, which the possession of more mind and knowledge by the people might disturb or destroy. May not the notion of it, as entertained by some persons, be rather an image of the polity of an age long past, or of that which remains unaltered as if it were a part of eternal nature in the dominions of the East, than a model for the conformation of society here in the present times? Is it ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... the laws of architecture are moral laws, as applicable to the building of character as to the construction of cathedrals. He finds those laws to be Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, and, as the crowning grace of all, that principle to which Polity owes its stability, Life its happiness, Faith its acceptance, and Creation its continuance—Obedience. He holds that there is no such thing as liberty, and never can be. The stars have it not; the ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... which it is a sacred duty to believe, experience is but like water dropping upon a rock, which wears it away, indeed, at last, but only in thousands of years. This theory was and is the central idea of the Jewish polity, the obstinate toughness of which has been the perplexity of Gentiles and Christians from the first dawn of its existence; it lingers among ourselves in our Liturgy and in the popular belief; and in spite of the emphatic censure of Him after whose name we call ourselves, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... ye have the inventors and the original of book-licensing ripped up and drawn as lineally as any pedigree. We have it not, that can be heard of, from any ancient state, or polity or church; nor by any statute left us by our ancestors elder or later; nor from the modern custom of any reformed city or church abroad, but from the most anti-christian council and the most tyrannous inquisition that ever inquired. Till then books were ever as freely ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton


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