rule.
A regulation, law, guideline.
Meaning & usage
A regulation, law, guideline.
All participants must adhere to the rules.
You have to follow the rules to enter the qualifiers for the football tournament.
A regulating principle.
The act of ruling; administration of law; government; empire; authority; control.
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.
Conduct; behaviour.
An order regulating the practice of the courts, or an order made between parties to an action or a suit.
A determinate method prescribed for performing any operation and producing a certain result.
A ruler; device for measuring, a straightedge, a measure.
A straight line (continuous mark, as made by a pen or the like), especially one lying across a paper as a guide for writing.
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.
Where this word comes from
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.
To regulate, be in charge of, make decisions for, reign over.
To excel.
This game rules!
To decide judicially.
To establish or settle by, or as by, a rule; to fix by universal or general consent, or by common practice.
To mark (paper or the like) with rules (lines).
Where this word comes from
From Middle English reulen, rulen, borrowed from Old French riuler, from Latin regulāre (“to regulate, rule”), from regula (“a rule”); see regular and regulate.
Revelry.
Where this word comes from
Related to revel.
To revel.
Where this word comes from
Related to revel.
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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.