law unto oneself
/ˈlɔ ˈʌntə ˌwʌnˈsɛlf/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.40 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
14
Letters
3
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
One who flouts the law or conventional wisdom; one who ignores rules or logic to behave according to his or her own standards.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "If you take away the Law, all things will fall into a Confuſion, every Man will become a law unto himſelf; which, in the depraved Condition of Human Nature, muſt needs produce many great Enormities."
- "The noiseless leaping forward of the canoe beneath him heightened his sense of breaking with the past and hastening onward into another life. In that life he would be a new creature, free to be a law unto himself."
- "The king, of course, was regarded as the central focus of traditional English institutions. By no means should he rule arbitrarily, nor was he a law unto himself."
- "Here comes Satan, prince of the power of the air / He's gonna make you a law unto yourself, gonna build a bird's nest in your hair / He's gonna deaden your conscience 'til you worship the work of your own hands / You'll be serving strangers in a strange, forsaken land"
- "The idea that administrators exercise authority as ‘laws unto themselves’ is one that applies in the first instance to exercises of discretion rather than to interpretations of law."
- "[T]he law was made to oppress the colored race, so I snapped my finger at the law, an' resolved to come up with it every time I got a chance. I would be a higher law unto myself; for if a white man, when he was wronged, was justified in rightin' himself, even to the takin' of life, I, bein' no whit inferior to my white compeer, would take the law into my own hands as he had into hisn."
Etymology
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈlɔ ˈʌntə ˌwʌnˈsɛlf/
- British English: /ˈlɔː ˈʌntʊ ˌwʌnˈsɛlf/