Poliiside

Poliiside is the genitive plural form of the Estonian noun referring to the police or police officers. It represents a grammatical case used to denote possession, association, or relation to the police in statements about multiple officers or the police as an institution. In standard Estonian, the nominative plural is poliisid, while the genitive plural is poliiside.

The form is common in formal writing, journalism, and legal or governmental texts, where it helps attribute actions, responsibilities, or qualities to the police as a collective entity. For example, phrases such as poliiside tegevus (the police’s activities), poliiside varustus (the police equipment), and poliiside võim (the police powers) illustrate how poliiside functions as a marker of the police as a group. The genitive plural is also used in compound expressions and in contexts where the noun is dependent on another word that requires a genitive.

As a grammatical form, poliiside is not a separate concept but a necessary inflected variant of the noun related to law enforcement. Its usage is governed by standard Estonian declension rules and can appear in both formal prose and everyday speech when discussing law enforcement, policy, or governance. While the term itself does not convey new information beyond its grammatical role, it enables precise reference to the police as a collective body or to actions and attributes belonging to police officers.