law
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: enpr: lô
ipa: /lɔː/
rhymes: -ɔː
ipa: /laː/
ipa: [loː]
ipa: /lɔ/
enpr: lä
ipa: /lɑ/
ipa: /loː/
homophone: la (cot–caught merger)
homophone: lore (non-rhotic, horse–hoarse merger)
homophone: lure (non-rhotic, pour–poor merger)
Forms: form: laws
form: lawing
form: lawed
form: lawed
Etymology: From Middle English lawe, laȝe, from Old English lagu (“law”), borrowed from Old Norse lǫg (“law”, literally “things laid down or firmly established”), originally the plural of lag (“layer, stratum, a laying in order, measure, stroke”), from Proto-Germanic *lagą (“that which is laid down”), from Proto-Indo-European *legʰ- (“to lie”). Cognate with Scots law (“law”), Icelandic lög (“things laid down, law”), Faroese lóg (“law”), Norwegian lov (“law”), Swedish lag (“law”), Danish lov (“law”), Finnish laki (“law”). Compare typologically distant cognate Russian уложе́ние (uložénije). Displaced native Old English ǣ and ġesetnes. More at lay.
Not related to legal, nor to French loi, Spanish ley, all of which ultimately derive from Latin lēx, from Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- (“to gather”).
Senses: examples: text: That was in 1877 you were lawing with Herdick?
ref: 1889, New York (State). Court of Appeals, New York Court of Appeals. Records and Briefs, page 71:
text: J. H. Turner is married and lawing in Milwaukee.
ref: 1897, The Scroll of Phi Delta Theta - Volume 21, page 210:
text: 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.
ref: 1923, Briton Hadden, Time - Volume 29, page 59:
glosses: To work as a lawyer; to practice law.
examples: text: Your husband's … so given to lawing, they say. I doubt he'll leave you poorly off when he dies.
ref: 1860, George Eliot (Mary Anne Lewes), The Mill on the Floss
text: "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."
ref: 1886, Charles Dudley Warner, Their Pilgrimage, page 144:
text: “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.”
ref: 2014, Joseph Andrew Orser, The Lives of Chang and Eng: Siam's Twins in Nineteenth-Century America:
glosses: To prosecute or sue (someone), to litigate.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1939, Henry Green Hodges, City management: theory and practice of municipal administration:
text: 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.
ref: 1969, Aryan Path - Volume 40, page 338:
text: 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".
ref: 1979, Gokhale, Surat In The Seventeenth Century, →ISBN, page 27:
text: 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)
ref: 2007, Henry Grenryk Ledesma, The Little Book: The Sound of the Seventh Trumpet, page 38:
text: 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.
ref: 2011, Brian Freemantle, The Iron Cage, →ISBN:
glosses: To rule over (with a certain effect) by law; to govern.
examples: text: De gram jury lawed me all de time an' dat place got too hot.
ref: 1918, Eldred Kurtz Means, E.K. Means, page 50:
text: The only time I ever got lawed [arrested] was for the union. Happened three times.
ref: 1972, Bill Peterson, Coaltown revisited: an Appalachian notebook, page 28:
text: 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.
ref: 2008, Ron McLarty, Art in America: A Novel, →ISBN:
text: 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?
ref: 2013, J B Bergstad, Hyde's Corner - Book II - In The Name of Vengeance, →ISBN:
glosses: To enforce the law.
examples: text: 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
ref: 1895, The Chronicle - Volumes 55-56, page 125:
text: No man knew what his water rights were until they had been lawed over, and lawed over, and lawed over again.
ref: 1914, California Outlook - Volume 16, page lxx:
text: 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
ref: 1920, Weight and Measure, page 34:
text: She knows what's tethered underwater. Not Children's bodies, but their toys, their lost, Lawed-against pleasures
ref: 1994, Lisa Lewis, The Unbeliever, →ISBN, page 58:
glosses: To subject to legal restrictions.
Related terms: lawe