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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

bylaw.

A local custom or law of a settlement or district.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈbaɪ.lɔː/UK/ˈbaɪ.lɔ/US/ˈbaɪ.lɑ/cot-caught-merger
  1. A local custom or law of a settlement or district.

  2. A rule made by a local authority to regulate its own affairs.

    in-plural · often
  3. A rule made by a local authority to regulate its own affairs. A numbered provision within such kind of legislation.

    countable · in-plural · often · singular
  4. A law or rule governing the internal affairs of an organization (e.g., corporation or business).

Where this word comes from

From Middle English bylawe, bilawe, partly from Old English bīlage (“bylaw”) and partly from a variant of Middle English byrelawe, birlawe, from Old Norse býjar (“town's; settlement's”) + lǫg (“laws; jurisdiction”). Byrlaw is attested earlier in English but is unattested in Old Norse and the cognates in Scandinavian languages follow the development of bylaw: Danish bylov (“municipal law”), Swedish bylag and byalag.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.