rule
Direct German Translations & Equivalents:
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Verb Conjugation Tables & Inflections
Definitions & Usage
A regulation, law, guideline.
A regulating principle.
(uncountable) The act of ruling; administration of law; government; empire; authority; control.
A normal condition or state of affairs.
(obsolete) Conduct; behaviour.
(law) An order regulating the practice of the courts, or an order made between parties to an action or a suit.
(mathematics) 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.
(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.
(transitive, stative) To regulate, be in charge of, make decisions for, reign over.
(slang, intransitive, stative) To excel.
(transitive) To establish or settle by, or as by, a rule; to fix by universal or general consent, or by common practice.
(transitive) To mark (paper or the like) with rules (lines).
(obsolete) Revelry.
(obsolete, intransitive) To revel.
Notable Literary & Historical Quotes
“We profess to have embraced a religion which contains the most exact rules for the government of our lives.”
— a. 1694, John Tillotson, Of The Obligations of Christians to a Holy Life:
“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.”
— 2013 June 22, “T time”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 68:
“There's little can be said in 't; 'Tis against the rule of nature.”
— c. 1604–1605 (date written), William Shakespeare, “All’s Well, that Ends Well”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]: