rule – English noun declension

English noun forms of rule

Noun: rule
Singularrule
Pluralrules

Sample Sentences

  • All participants must adhere to the rules.
  • You have to follow the rules to enter the qualifiers for the football tournament.
  • 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]:]
  • Obey them that have the rule over you. [1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Hebrews 13:17:]
  • His stern rule the groaning land obeyed. [1725, Homer, “Book III”, in [Alexander Pope], transl., The Odyssey of Homer. […], volume I, London: […] Bernard Lintot, →OCLC:]
  • My rule is to rise at six o'clock.
  • As a rule, our senior editors are serious-minded.
  • This uncivil rule; she shall know of it. [c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]:]
  • a rule for extracting the cube root
  • As we may observe in the Works of Art, a Judicious Artist will indeed use his Eye, but he will trust only to his Rule. [a. 1716, Robert South, Sermons:]
  • It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity—one might as well warp a carpenter's rule before using it. [1981, Aristotle, “Rhetoric, the Counterpart of Dialectic”, in W. Rhys Roberts, Ingram Bywater, transl., Rhetoric and On Poetics, Pennsylvania: The Franklin Library, →OL:]

Etymology

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. See: Middle English Nouns 'reule', Latin Nouns 'regula'.

Verbs referencing "rule"

Spanish Nouns regla, French Nouns règle.