Definition of "law"

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 had perhaps spared no pains to keep on good terms with the local constabulary.

1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company

Here one comes upon an all-important English trait: the respect for constitutionalism and legality, the belief in "the law" as something above the State and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible. It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this, everyone takes it for granted that the law, such as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not.

1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn, Pt. I

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.

1915, G[eorge] A. Birmingham [pseudonym; James Owen Hannay], chapter I, in Gossamer, New York, N.Y.: George H. Doran Company

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

1979, Frank Zappa (lyrics and music), “Joe's Garage”

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."

1889, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Rugby, page 150

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

1793, Richard Wooddeson, A Systematical View of the Laws of England, page 169

But, before the defendant takes the oath, the plaintiff is called by the crier thrice; and if he do not appear he becomes nonsuited, and then the defendant goes quit without taking his oath; and if he appear, and the defendant swear that he owes the plaintiff nothing, and the compurgators give it upon oath, that they believe he swears true, the plaintiff is barred for ever; for when a person has waged his law, it is as much as if a verdict had passed against the plaintiff; if the plaintiff do not appear to hear the defendant perform his law, so that he is nonsuit, he is not barred, but may bring a new action.

1846, Matthew Bacon, Sir Henry Gwilliam, Charles Edward Dodd, A New Abridgment of the Law with Large Additions and Corrections

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).

2013, William Paley Baildon, Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield: Volume 2, 1297 to 1309, page ix

That was in 1877 you were lawing with Herdick?

1889, New York (State). Court of Appeals, New York Court of Appeals. Records and Briefs, page 71

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

1897, The Scroll of Phi Delta Theta - Volume 21, page 210

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.

1923, Briton Hadden, Time - Volume 29, page 59

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

1860, George Eliot (Mary Anne Lewes), The Mill on the Floss

"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."

1886, Charles Dudley Warner, Their Pilgrimage, page 144

“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.”

2014, Joseph Andrew Orser, The Lives of Chang and Eng: Siam's Twins in Nineteenth-Century America

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.

1939, Henry Green Hodges, City management: theory and practice of municipal administration

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.

1969, Aryan Path - Volume 40, page 338

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".

1979, Gokhale, Surat In The Seventeenth Century, page 27

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)

2007, Henry Grenryk Ledesma, The Little Book: The Sound of the Seventh Trumpet, page 38

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.

2011, Brian Freemantle, The Iron Cage

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

1918, Eldred Kurtz Means, E.K. Means, page 50

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

1972, Bill Peterson, Coaltown revisited: an Appalachian notebook, page 28

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.

2008, Ron McLarty, Art in America: A Novel

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?

2013, J B Bergstad, Hyde's Corner - Book II - In The Name of Vengeance

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

1895, The Chronicle - Volumes 55-56, page 125

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

1914, California Outlook - Volume 16, page lxx

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

1920, Weight and Measure, page 34

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

1994, Lisa Lewis, The Unbeliever, page 58

[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.

1892, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Lantern-bearers”, in Across the Plains: With Other Memories and Essays, London: Chatto & Windus, […], part I, page 209

‘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?’

1791-92, Jane Austen, ‘The Three Sisters’, Juvenilia