Politics
The word comes from the same Greek word from which the title of Aristotle's book "Politics" (Πολιτικά, "Polis") also derives; "polis" means "affairs of the cities". The book title was rendered in Early Modern English in the mid-15th century as "Polettiques"; it became "politics" in Modern English. The singular "politic" first attested in English 1430 and comes from Middle French "politique", in turn from Latin "politicus", which is the Latinization of the Greek πολιτικός ("politikos"), meaning amongst others "of, for, or relating to citizens", "civil", "civic", "belonging to the state", in turn from πολίτης ("polites"), "citizen" and that from πόλις ("polis"), "city".
Political consciousness
In a politically charged sense, becoming "politically conscious" is often meant to connote that people have awakened to their "true" political role, their "actual" identity. For Marx, this meant that the working classes would become conscious of themselves as the agents of history--they would unite and share in the wealth of labor. This, for Marx, was their historical role and their right (as opposed to working for wages, fighting wars on behalf of capitalists, and so forth). For many African Americans, "consciousness" has meant identifying and discrediting forms of White supremacy, including those internalized by Blacks. In these uses of the term "consciousness" is truth or destiny. These uses of political consciousness are often politically charged. Does, for example, a Black woman lack consciousness because she generally supports a system run mostly by White male capitalists? If she became politically conscious would she think differently? What is her "true" consciousness supposed to look like?