law

noun

1. (countable, uncountable, usually, with-definite-article)The body of binding rules and regulations, customs, and standards established in a community by its legislative and judicial authorities.

   “Not unnaturally, "Auntie" took this communication in bad part.[…]Next day she[…]tried to recover her ward by the hair of the head. Then, thwarted, the wretched creature went to the police for help; she was versed in the law, and perhaps had spared no pains to keep on good terms with the local constabulary.”

   “The courts interpret the law but should not make it.”

   “In theory, entrapment is against the law.”

2. (countable, uncountable, usually, with-definite-article)The body of binding rules and regulations, customs, and standards established in a community by its legislative and judicial authorities.

   “property law”

   “commercial hunting and fishing law”

3. (countable, uncountable, usually, with-definite-article)The body of binding rules and regulations, customs, and standards established in a community by its legislative and judicial authorities.
4. (countable, uncountable)A binding regulation or custom established in a community in this way.

   “There is a law against importing wallabies.”

   “A new law forbids driving on that road.”

   “The court ruled that the executive order was not law and nullified it.”

   “As a political system democracy seems to me extraordinarily foolish,[…]. My servant is, so far as I am concerned, welcome to as many votes as he can get.[…]I do not suppose that it matters much in reality whether laws are made by dukes or cornerboys, but I like, as far as possible, to associate with gentlemen in private life.”

5. (broadly, countable, uncountable)A rule, such as:

   “"Do unto others as you wish them to do unto you" is a good law to follow.”

   “the law of self-preservation”

6. (broadly, countable, uncountable)A rule, such as:

   “the laws of playwriting and poetry”

   “The normal pronoun to use with "spirit" would be "it." But Jesus breaks the law of grammar and says not "when it," but "when he."”

7. (broadly, countable, uncountable)A rule, such as:

   “Observing pi is easier than studying physical phenomena, because you can prove things in mathematics, whereas you can't prove anything in physics. And, unfortunately, the laws of physics change once every generation.”

   “the laws of thermodynamics”

   “Newton's third law of motion states that to every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.”

   “This is one of several laws derived from his general theory expounded in the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.”

8. (broadly, countable, uncountable)A rule, such as:

   “Mathematical laws can be proved purely through mathematics, without scientific experimentation.”

9. (broadly, countable, uncountable)A rule, such as:

   “the law of scarcity”

   “the law of supply and demand”

10. (broadly, countable, uncountable)A rule, such as:

    “Grimm's law”

    “Dahl's law”

11. (broadly, countable, uncountable)A rule, such as:
12. (countable, uncountable)The control and order brought about by the observance of such rules.

    “They worked to maintain law and order.”

    “It was a territory without law, marked by violence.”

13. (countable, informal, uncountable)A person or group that act(s) with authority to uphold such rules and order (for example, one or more police officers).

    “Here comes the law — run!”

    “then the law arrived on the scene”

    “That was Joe's first confrontation with "The Law" / Naturally, we were easy on him / One of our friendly counsellors gave him a donut / And told him to stick closer / To church-oriented social activities”

14. (countable, uncountable)The profession that deals with such rules (as lawyers, judges, police officers, etc).

    “He is studying for a career in law.”

    “She has practiced law in New York for twenty years.”

15. (countable, uncountable)Jurisprudence, the field of knowledge which encompasses these rules.

    “She went to university to study law.”

16. (countable, uncountable)Litigation; legal action (as a means of maintaining or restoring order, redressing wrongs, etc).

    “They were quick to go to law.”

17. (countable, uncommon, uncountable)An allowance of distance or time (a head start) given to a weaker (human or animal) competitor in a race, to make the race more fair.

    “After a few minutes' waiting, two well-known runners, chosen for the hares, buckled on the four bags filled with scent, compared their watches with those of young Brooke and Thome, and started off at a long, slinging trot across the fields in the direction of Barby. Then the hounds clustered round Thome, who explained shortly, "They're to have six minutes' law."”

18. (countable, uncountable)A mode of operation of the flight controls of a fly-by-wire aircraft.

    “normal law; alternate law; direct law”

19. (countable, uncountable)One of two metaphysical forces ruling the world in some fantasy settings, also called order, and opposed to chaos.
20. (countable, historical, uncountable)An oath sworn before a court, especially disclaiming a debt. (Chiefly in the phrases "wager of law", "wage one's law", "perform one's law", "lose one's law".)

    “As to the depriving the defendant of waging his law, it was thought, the practice merited discouragement, as a temptation to perjury.”

    “A withdrawal from a wager of law was an admission of the point as to which the law was waged; the defaulter also incurred a fine (i, 297).”

21. (obsolete)A tumulus of stones.
22. (Northern-England, Scotland, archaic)A hill.

    “[Y]ou might climb the Law, where the whale's jawbone stood landmark in the buzzing wind, and behold the face of many counties, and the smoke and spires of many towns, and the sails of distant ships.”

23. (dialectal, obsolete)A score; share of expense; legal charge.
24. (abbreviation, acronym, alt-of)Acronym of light anti-tank weapon.

verb

1. (obsolete)To work as a lawyer; to practice law.

   “That was in 1877 you were lawing with Herdick?”

   “J. H. Turner is married and lawing in Milwaukee.”

   “The American Bar Association ruefully admits that the legal profession is overcrowded, especially in large cities. It has a committee studying the situation. Last week an editorial in the New York Law Journal urged a youthful revolt against the city, twanged an idyll of lawing in the country.”

2. (ambitransitive, dialectal)To prosecute or sue (someone), to litigate.

   “Your husband's … so given to lawing, they say. I doubt he'll leave you poorly off when he dies.”

   “"I like folks to be up and down and square," she began saying, as she vigilantly watched the effect of her culinary skill upon the awed little party. "Yes, I've got a regular hotel license; you bet I have. There's been folks lawed in this town for sellin' a meal of victuals and not having one."”

   ““So I said to her, 'Well, no man ever made anything lawing with his wife, so, if your mind is set on having a divorce and the children you will want plenty to raise them with,' so I deed her the farm in Sumner county and everything on it—horses, mules, machinery, everything.””

3. (nonstandard)To rule over (with a certain effect) by law; to govern.

   “At its 1933 session, the Kansas legislature provided for funding outstanding bills and floating debts of those cities which could not make payment by a fixed date. By this stroke of its imagination, the legislature lawed all Kansas cities onto a "cash" basis and admonished them to stay there.”

   “Earth lies in the chorus of the stars' congregation in the lawed line of their movement, in the balanced rotation of their light, bound by that lawed line, conceived in the focus of that turning; a vessel fashioned on the wheel of endless time.”

   “Nicholas Downton (February 1615) says of the people of Surat: "a mixt people, quiet, peaceable, very subtle; civil, and universally governed under one King, but diversely lawed and customed".”

   “So that, when GOD said, “Let there be light:” Behold the first created light burst out unto its glory (here GOD lawed the power of heat, fire, light, melting, cooling, and freezing)”

   “Beyond the ocher and yellow-washed buildings, French colonial with a suggestion of Beau Geste from the castellated balconies, it is an arm-grabbing, loosely lawed bazaar of a place.”

4. (informal)To enforce the law.

   “De gram jury lawed me all de time an' dat place got too hot.”

   “The only time I ever got lawed [arrested] was for the union. Happened three times.”

   “So we're on the road with the micks, maybe a mile from the precinct, and Reedy just pulls over, takes them out onto the Commons, takes off the cuffs, and we knock about twenty pounds of shit out of them.” Petey sensed the agent watching him talk and tried to explain it all another way. “What I mean is, lawing used to be pretty damn pure.”

   “The sheriff jabbed his thumb at his chest. "I run this shebang. Been doing so for forty-six years. You think you can come in here and preach lawing to me?”

5. To subject to legal restrictions.

   “Insurance may fairly be said to head the list of objects of legislative interference. It has been lawed and lawed until it is nearly outlawed, and the cry for more continues to go up unsatisfied”

   “No man knew what his water rights were until they had been lawed over, and lawed over, and lawed over again.”

   “It has been truly said that we are lawed into existence and lawed through life and lawed out of it more than any other nation”

   “She knows what's tethered underwater. Not Children's bodies, but their toys, their lost, Lawed-against pleasures”

intj

1. (dated)An exclamation of mild surprise; lawks; in interjections, a minced oath for Lord.

   “‘Do tell me once for all, whether you intend to marry Mr Watts or not?’ ‘Law Mama, how can I tell you what I don't know myself?’”

   “[…] and my boots were a leetle 'eavier than they are, law bless my soul! I'd do it myself.”

   “Arthur Sketchley. But, law bless my 'art , it's werry orful to be a forriner, as I were a-thinkin', and never be able to make yourself understood, except in that gibberish,”

name

1. A surname originating as a patronymic.
2. A diminutive of the male given name Lawrence.
3. (countable, uncountable)A topographic surname from Old English, perhaps originally meaning someone who lives near a burial mound.
4. (Scotland, countable, uncountable)a conical hill
5. (countable, uncountable)A village in South Lanarkshire council area, Scotland, United Kingdom (OS grid ref NS8252).
6. (Judaism)Synonym of Torah: the five Books of Moses, particularly the commandments in it, as well as their specification in the Mishnah and their further interpretation in later religious literature.
7. the commandments in the Books of Moses, sometimes seen as transcended by Christ
8. the commandments and moral principles that are binding for Christians, such as the Decalogue, the teachings of the New Testament, the Church Fathers, etc.
9. A surname from Chinese.