Law Definition–noun | 1. | the principles and regulations established in a community by some authority and applicable to its people, whether in the form of legislation or of custom and policies recognized and enforced by judicial decision. | | 2. | any written or positive rule or collection of rules prescribed under the authority of the state or nation, as by the people in its constitution. Compare bylaw, statute law. | | 3. | the controlling influence of such rules; the condition of society brought about by their observance: maintaining law and order. | | 4. | a system or collection of such rules. | | 5. | the department of knowledge concerned with these rules; jurisprudence: to study law. | | 6. | the body of such rules concerned with a particular subject or derived from a particular source: commercial law. | | 7. | an act of the supreme legislative body of a state or nation, as distinguished from the constitution. | | 8. | the principles applied in the courts of common law, as distinguished from equity. | | 9. | the profession that deals with law and legal procedure: to practice law. | | 10. | legal action; litigation: to go to law. | | 11. | a person, group, or agency acting officially to enforce the law: The law arrived at the scene soon after the alarm went off. | | 12. | any rule or injunction that must be obeyed: Having a nourishing breakfast was an absolute law in our household. | | 13. | a
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rule or principle of proper conduct sanctioned by conscience, concepts of natural justice, or the will of a deity: a moral law. | | 14. | a rule or manner of behavior that is instinctive or spontaneous: the law of self-preservation. | | 15. | (in philosophy, science, etc.) | a. | a statement of a relation or sequence of phenomena invariable under the same conditions. | | | 16. | a principle based on the predictable consequences of an act, condition, etc.: the law of supply and demand. | | 17. | a rule, principle, or convention regarded as governing the structure or the relationship of an element in the structure of something, as of a language or work of art: the laws of playwriting; the laws of grammar. | | 18. | a commandment or a revelation from God. | | 19. | (sometimes initial capital letter ) a divinely appointed order or system. | | 21. | the preceptive part of the Bible, esp. of the New Testament, in contradistinction to its promises: the law of Christ. | | 22. | British Sports. an allowance of time or distance given a quarry or competitor in a race, as the head start given a fox before the hounds are set after it. | –verb (used with object) | 23. | Chiefly Dialect. to sue or prosecute. | | 24. | British. (formerly) to expeditate (an animal). | —Idioms | 25. | be a law to or unto oneself, to follow one's own inclinations, rules of behavior, etc.; act independently or unconventionally, esp. without regard for established mores. | | 26. | lay down the law, | a. | to state one's views authoritatively. | | b. | to give a command in an imperious manner: The manager laid down the law to the workers. | | | 27. | take the law into one's own hands, to administer justice as one sees fit without recourse to the usual law enforcement or legal processes: The townspeople took the law into their own hands before the sheriff took action. | |
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