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rule - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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, regal, regula, and rigol.

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[1]:

      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.

(Terms derived from the noun rule):

Collocations

  • legal rules
  • constitutional rule
  • strict rules
  • general rules
  • specific rules
  • basic rules
  • unwritten rules
  • unspoken rules
  • rigid rules
  • stupid rules
  • silly rules

regulation

straight-edge — see ruler

the act of ruling; control

a normal condition or state of affairs

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

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.
    Synonyms: (slang) rock; see also Thesaurus:excel
    Antonyms: stink, (vulgar slang) suck

    This game rules!

  4. (intransitive) To decide judicially.
  5. (transitive) To establish or settle by, or as by, a rule; to fix by universal or general consent, or by common practice.
  6. (transitive) To mark (paper or the like) with rules (lines).

(Terms derived from rule (verb)):

to regulate, be in charge of, make decisions for, reign over

slang: to excel

to mark with lines

Related to revel.

rule

  1. (obsolete) Revelry.

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

  1. (obsolete, intransitive) To revel.

rule f

  1. dative/locative singular of rula

Compare with Yoruba sáré

rúlé

  1. to run

rule

  1. inflection of rular:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative

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