VETO • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Veto

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/vˈitoʊ/ /vˈitˌoʊ/ Listen

noun

Veto n. (pl. vetoes)

An authoritative prohibition or negative; a forbidding; an interdiction. "This contemptuous veto of her husband's on any intimacy with her family."

Specifically:

(a)

A power or right possessed by one department of government to forbid or prohibit the carrying out of projects attempted by another department; especially, in a constitutional government, a power vested in the chief executive to prevent the enactment of measures passed by the legislature. Such a power may be absolute, as in the case of the Tribunes of the People in ancient Rome, or limited, as in the case of the President of the United States. Called also the veto power.

(b)

The exercise of such authority; an act of prohibition or prevention; as, a veto is probable if the bill passes.

(c)

A document or message communicating the reasons of the executive for not officially approving a proposed law; called also veto message. (U. S.) Note: Veto is not a term employed in the Federal Constitution, but seems to be of popular use only.

verb

Veto v. t. (past & past part. vetoed; pres. part. vetoing) To prohibit; to negative; also, to refuse assent to, as a legislative bill, and thus prevent its enactment; as, to veto an appropriation bill.

See images of 'Veto'

Etymology of 'Veto'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Veto" Quotes from Famous Books

... the most creditable portion of his political history; but it certainly argues well for his magnanimity and freedom from merely personal resentment that he gave this appointment to the man who had animadverted upon that course with the greatest freedom, and whose rebuke of the veto pledge, severe in its truth and justice, formed the only discord in the paean of partisan flattery which greeted his inaugural. But, however well intended, it came too late. In the midst of the congratulations of his friends on the brightening prospect ...

— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... bill with a veto. He had the audacity to rest his veto upon the ground that the bill was unconstitutional, and that it was the duty of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of every measure without feeling in the least bound by the opinion of Congress or ...

— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... and of all personal intrigue from within, is to obtain this imperial consent to measures suggested by considerations of private advantage or public necessity. The Ottoman Empire may be described as an irregular democracy, whose acts are all subject to the veto of an absolute autocrat. The officials pass their lives in proposing, and his Majesty very generally spends his time in opposing, all manner of schemes, good, bad, and indifferent. The contradictory nature of the system produces the anomalous ...

— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... chummy with Swifty Joe and took to sunnin' himself in the studio front windows, until I had to veto that. ...

— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... decided that the Sovereign must sanction every bill which Parliament approves and resolves to make law. Queen Anne was the last occupant of the English throne who ventured to veto a bill, by refusing to assent to it. That was in 1707, or more than two hundred years ago, and there is little probability that any wearer of the crown will ever attempt to do what she did. In fact, an able and authoritative English writer has not hesitated to declare that ...

— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

More quotes...