Polis
Etymology
Greek "polis" was the city-state, the basic political unit of ancient Greece and the setting of citizenship. It generates "politics," "polity," "police," "policy," "metropolis" (mother-city), and "cosmopolitan," world-citizen.
noun · /POL-iss/
The self-governing city-state — and, by extension, the political community itself.
What it names
The arena of shared civic life, the "we" within which citizenship even makes sense.
Example
Online, we have opinions but no polis — a stream of strangers rather than a community that must live with its own decisions.
Related idea
The community a demos inhabits; Aristotle called us political animals precisely because we are made for the polis.