law of the jungle
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.10 in modern English
31
Scrabble Score
14
Letters
2
Syllables
12
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A putative law dictating that one serves one's own interest to the extent that one can, in any situation where legal authority is absent or generally ignored; self-interested behaviour that emerges in the absence of law; lawlessness.
noun
Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see law, jungle.
Example Sentences
- "1938, Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of Teachers of International Law and Related Subjects, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, page 111, In the next war there will be no international law or 'comity of nations' but merely the law of the jungle, and of primeval man—each for himself and the devil take the next man."
- "1983, The Law of the Sea, School of Law, Duke University, page 57, To bring order to this law of the jungle at sea was a particular reason for the Law of the Sea Conference, especially insofar as the United States was concerned."
- "1988, The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in Southeast Asia: Problems of Implementation, Volume 1, Southeast Asian Programme on Ocean Law, Policy, and Management, page 2, For small countries such as Singapore, they would have the most to lose if the law of the jungle were to prevail."
- "Our age of what Mark Carney called global rupture is also often described as following the “law of the jungle”, in which the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must, with international law shattered and multilateral organisations hollowed out."
- "The Law of the Jungle — which is by far the oldest law in the world — has arranged for almost every kind of accident that may befall the Jungle People, till now its code is as perfect as time and custom can make it."
Etymology
Popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his book, The Jungle Book (1894), in which he used the term in the literal sense of a legal code governing the behavior of his anthropomorphized animals in an Indian jungle. Note also the (possibly derived) colloquial sense of jungle (“a place where people behave ruthlessly, unconstrained by law or morality”).