Word of the Day:

“‘Kill Bill’ meets James Bond in the video, in which Swift fights against and with a posse of stars such as Selena Gomez, Cindy Crawford and Zendaya. Don’t expect them to pop up in the movie but, on tour, Swift performed the No. 1 hit with a posse of fierce, hip-swiveling dancers who stepped into the stars’ kicks.” — Chris Hewitt, The Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota), 10 Oct. 2023

More example sentences

Posse started out in English as part of a term from common law, posse comitatus, which in Medieval Latin translates as “power or authority of the county.” Posse comitatus referred to a group of citizens summoned by a reeve (a medieval official) or sheriff to preserve the public peace as allowed for by law. “Preserving the public peace” so often meant hunting down a supposed criminal that posse eventually came to refer to any group organized to make a search or embark on a mission, and today one may read about posses organized for search and rescue efforts. In even broader use it can refer to any group, period. Sometimes nowadays that group is a gang or a rock band but it can as easily be any group—of politicians, models, architects, tourists, children, or what have you—acting together for some shared purpose.