State can mean the condition or situation something or someone is in, such as a state of health or a state of mind. It also means a political unit, such as a country or a division within a country, that has its own government.
From Old French “estat” meaning “condition, position,” from Latin “status” meaning “manner of standing, condition,” from “stare” meaning “to stand.” The political sense grew from the idea of how a people or government ‘stands’ as a group.
Whether we say ‘a state of emergency’ or ‘the State’ as a government, we’re talking about how something stands—its condition or its organized structure. That’s why physics uses ‘states of matter’ and politics uses ‘states’ of people under a government: both are forms of being arranged.
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