politics
part of speech
noun (politics — uncountable, used with a singular or plural verb)
meaning for a pupil
1) Politics is the activities of governments and people who run a country, including elections and making laws. tree →
2) Politics is the study of how countries are governed. tree →
3) A person's politics are their opinions about how the country should be run. tree →
4) (informal) Politics can mean arguing and plotting for power in any group: office politics, playground politics. tree →
sense in the lessons
In citizenship lessons pupils learn about voting, parliaments and political parties. In everyday life people argue about politics on the news. «Playground politics» is when friendship groups argue and take sides. Phrases: go into politics, talk politics, play politics.
examples
- My uncle is interested in politics. tree →
- People in politics make laws for the country. tree →
- She wants to go into politics when she grows up. tree →
- We don't talk about politics at dinner. tree →
- There's a lot of politics in our football club. tree →
- Politics is studied at university. tree →
- About politics they had a good deal to say. tree →
note
Ends in -s but is uncountable: «Politics is interesting» (as a subject). Related: political (adjective), politician (a person in politics), policy (a plan). Stress: POL-i-tics, but po-LIT-i-cal.
In the corpora
- Family arguments about politics are very common, because big choices affect everybody and people's views come from their own lives.
- Politics does the same with money and bad news: a statement that turned out false is suddenly called "inoperative".
- Friends can disagree about politics and still share lunch.
- Politics is how groups of people make decisions and share things out when they cannot all have what they want.
- People disagree whether memes get young people interested in politics or squash big topics into jokes without facts.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «politics» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.