UNWRITTEN LAW • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Unwritten law

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/ənrˈɪtən lɔ/ Listen

adjective

Unwritten adj.

Not written; not reduced to writing; oral; as, unwritten agreements.

Containing no writing; blank; as, unwritten paper.

Unwritten doctrines (Theol.), such doctrines as have been handed down by word of mouth; oral or traditional doctrines.

Unwritten law. That part of the law of England and of the United States which is not derived from express legislative enactment, or at least from any enactment now extant and in force as such. This law is now generally contained in the reports of judicial decisions. See Common law, under Common.

Unwritten laws, such laws as have been handed down by tradition or in song. Such were the laws of the early nations of Europe.

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Etymology of 'Unwritten law'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Unwritten law" Quotes from Famous Books

... and is an unwritten law that policemen should be Irish. I enjoy Greeks in classic literature or in restaurants, but not as policemen. There is a saying in the city that when Greek meets Greek they go together to get a job on the Market Street Railways. But when they get upon the police force, I for one, shall move to ...

— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey

... nieces. Carnations leaned from tall glass vases, intricate little cakes jostled carefully piled sandwiches, and a huge brass samovar, borrowed for the occasion, gave dignity to the small parlor. Miss Trueman had learned by now the unwritten law that prevented the various objects in the once proudly segregated "drawing-room set" from association with each other, and made no attempt to correct their intentional isolation. The samovar she refused utterly to meddle with, assuring them that she would ...

— Julia The Apostate • Josephine Daskam

... gradually risen a system of fagging, such as is or was practised in the great English public schools—enforced services exacted from the younger lads—which at the time Myles came to Devlen had, in the five or six years it had been in practice, grown to be an absolute though unwritten law of the body—a law supported by all the prestige of long-continued usage. At that time the bachelors numbered but thirteen, yet they exercised over the rest of the sixty-four squires and pages a rule of iron, and were taskmasters, hard, ...

— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... inhabitants grew to be proud of their rosy citadel; it was an unwritten law among them that every new house should adapt itself to this tone. For the rest, there was not much building done after his death, with the exception of a few isolated villas that sprang up, despite his old commands, in the neighbourhood. ...

— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... fatuous "unwritten law" which allows a man to murder another man and the wife who has offended what he calls "his honor." There is nothing about that honor of his in old or new testament. It is a notion of his own, which overrides, "Thou shalt not kill," as easily as "lying like a gentleman" ...

— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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