officer

   ‘Take him to prison, officer’ sounds like a phrase that could occur in a modern detective story. In fact it is a quotation from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (3:i), though it could have occurred even earlier than the seventeenth century. An officer then, as now, was one who holds an office, though the term has for centuries been used mostly of military officers and those who in some way uphold the law.

   ‘Officer’ is still a polite way of addressing a policeman in any English-speaking country, and the term certainly is found in detective stories. ‘What do you have here, officer?’ occurs in The Case of the Spurious Spinster, by Erle Stanley Gardner. Brothers in Law, by Henry Cecil, has five examples. In the USA ‘Officer’ is also used as a prefix, followed by a last name. Thus a judge might address a policeman who is known to him as ‘Officer Smith’. The plural form can be used as necessary. ‘Hey, what is the trouble, officers?’ is said to two policemen by a man they have stopped in Ed McBain’s short story Hot Cars.