law
pronunciation
How to pronounce law in British English:
UK [lɔː]
How to pronounce law in American English:
US [lɔː]
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- Noun:
- legal document setting forth rules governing a particular kind of activity
- the collection of rules imposed by authority
- a generalization that describes recurring facts or events in nature
- a rule or body of rules of conduct inherent in human nature and essential to or binding upon human society
- the learned profession that is mastered by graduate study in a law school and that is responsible for the judicial system
- the force of policemen and officers
- the branch of philosophy concerned with the law and the principles that lead courts to make the decisions they do
Word Origin
- law
- law: [10] Etymologically, a law is that which has been ‘laid’ down. English borrowed the word from Old Norse *lagu (replacing the native Old English ǣ ‘law’), which was the plural of lag ‘laying, good order’. This came ultimately from the prehistoric Germanic base *lag- ‘put’, from which English gets lay. It has no etymological connection with the semantically similar legal.=> lay
- law (n.)
- Old English lagu (plural laga, comb. form lah-) "law, ordinance, rule, regulation; district governed by the same laws," from Old Norse *lagu "law," collective plural of lag "layer, measure, stroke," literally "something laid down or fixed," from Proto-Germanic *lagan "put, lay" (see lay (v.)). Replaced Old English æ and gesetnes, which had the same sense development as law. Compare also statute, from Latin statuere; German Gesetz "law," from Old High German gisatzida; Lithuanian istatymas, from istatyti "set up, establish." In physics, from 1660s. Law and order have been coupled since 1796.
Example
- 1. Fiscal responsibility is enshrined in law .
- 2. He has a phd in bio-chemistry and a law degree .
- 3. The current electoral law is universally deplored .
- 4. Yet this study did not necessarily refute dollo 's law .
- 5. The law of action and reaction is universal .