rule

See also: Rule and rulé

English

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ɹuːl/
  • (Wales) IPA(key): /ɹɪu̯l/
  • Audio (US) [ɹ̠ʷuːɫ](file)
  • Audio (US) [ɻʷʊːɫ](file)
  • Rhymes: -uːl

Etymology 1

From Middle English reule, rewle, rule, borrowed from Old French riule, reule, from Latin regula (“straight stick, bar, ruler, pattern”), from regō (“to keep straight, direct, govern, rule”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃réǵeti (“to straighten; right”), from the root *h₃reǵ-; see regent. Doublet of rail.

Noun

rule (countable and uncountable, plural rules)

  1. A regulation, law, guideline.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:rule
    All participants must adhere to the rules.
    • a. 1694, John Tillotson, Of The Obligations of Christians to a Holy Life:
      We profess to have embraced a religion which contains the most exact rules for the government of our lives.
    • 2013 June 22, “T time”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 68:
      The ability to shift profits to low-tax countries by locating intellectual property in them […] is often assumed to be the preserve of high-tech companies. […] current tax rules make it easy for all sorts of firms to generate […] “stateless income”: profit subject to tax in a jurisdiction that is neither the location of the factors of production that generate the income nor where the parent firm is domiciled.
  2. A regulating principle.
  3. The act of ruling; administration of law; government; empire; authority; control.
  4. A normal condition or state of affairs.
    My rule is to rise at six o'clock.
    As a rule, our senior editors are serious-minded.
  5. (obsolete) Conduct; behaviour.
  6. (law) An order regulating the practice of the courts, or an order made between parties to an action or a suit.
  7. (mathematics) A determinate method prescribed for performing any operation and producing a certain result.
    a rule for extracting the cube root
  8. A ruler; device for measuring, a straightedge, a measure.
    • a. 1716, Robert South, Sermons‎:
      As we may observe in the Works of Art, a Judicious Artist will indeed use his Eye, but he will trust only to his Rule.
    • 1981, Aristotle, “Rhetoric, the Counterpart of Dialectic”, in W. Rhys Roberts, Ingram Bywater, transl., Rhetoric and On Poetics, Pennsylvania: The Franklin Library, →OL:
      It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity—one might as well warp a carpenter's rule before using it.
  9. A straight line (continuous mark, as made by a pen or the like), especially one lying across a paper as a guide for writing.
  10. (printing, dated) A thin plate of brass or other metal, of the same height as the type, and used for printing lines, as between columns on the same page, or in tabular work.
Derived terms
Terms derived from the noun rule
Collocations
Collocations
  • legal rules
  • constitutional rule
  • strict rules
  • general rules
  • specific rules
  • basic rules
  • unwritten rules
  • unspoken rules
  • rigid rules
  • stupid rules
  • silly rules
Translations
straight-edge — see ruler

Etymology 2

From Middle English reulen, rulen, borrowed from Old French riuler, from Latin regulāre (“to regulate, rule”), from regula (“a rule”); see regular and regulate.

Verb

rule (third-person singular simple present rules, present participle ruling, simple past and past participle ruled)

  1. (transitive, stative) To regulate, be in charge of, make decisions for, reign over.
    • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
      And Vickers launched forth into a tirade very different from his platform utterances. He spoke with extreme contempt of the dense stupidity exhibited on all occasions by the working classes. He said that if you wanted to do anything for them, you must rule them, not pamper them. Soft heartedness caused more harm than good.
  2. (slang, intransitive, stative) To excel.
    This game rules!
  3. (intransitive) To decide judicially.
  4. (transitive) To establish or settle by, or as by, a rule; to fix by universal or general consent, or by common practice.
  5. (transitive) To mark (paper or the like) with rules (lines).
Conjugation
Conjugation of rule
infinitive (to) rule
present tense past tense
1st-person singular rule ruled
2nd-person singular rule, rulest† ruled, ruledst†
3rd-person singular rules, ruleth† ruled
plural rule
subjunctive rule ruled
imperative rule —
participles ruling ruled

†Archaic or obsolete.

Synonyms
  • (to excel): rock (also slang)
Antonyms
  • (antonym(s) of “to excel”): suck (vulgar slang)
Derived terms
Terms derived from rule (verb)
Translations

Etymology 3

Related to revel.

Noun

rule

  1. (obsolete) Revelry.

Verb

rule (third-person singular simple present rules, present participle ruling, simple past and past participle ruled)

  1. (obsolete, intransitive) To revel.

Further reading

Anagrams

Igala

Etymology

Compare with Yoruba sáré

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /rú.lé/

Verb

rúlé

  1. to run

Spanish

Verb

rule

  1. inflection of rular:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.