AUTHORITIES • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Authorities

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/əθˈɔrətiz/ Listen

noun

authorities n.

1.

The organization that is the governing authority of a political unit.

Synonyms: government, regime.

Authority n. (pl. authorities)

1.

Legal or rightful power; a right to command or to act; power exercised buy a person in virtue of his office or trust; dominion; jurisdiction; authorization; as, the authority of a prince over subjects, and of parents over children; the authority of a court. "Thus can the demigod, Authority, Make us pay down for our offense." "By what authority doest thou these things?"

2.

Government; the persons or the body exercising power or command; as, the local authorities of the States; the military authorities. (Chiefly in the plural.)

3.

The power derived from opinion, respect, or esteem; influence of character, office, or station, or mental or moral superiority, and the like; claim to be believed or obeyed; as, an historian of no authority; a magistrate of great authority.

4.

That which, or one who, is claimed or appealed to in support of opinions, actions, measures, etc. Hence:

(a)

Testimony; witness. "And on that high authority had believed."

(b)

A precedent; a decision of a court, an official declaration, or an opinion, saying, or statement worthy to be taken as a precedent.

(c)

A book containing such a statement or opinion, or the author of the book.

(d)

Justification; warrant. "Wilt thou be glass wherein it shall discern Authority for sin, warrant for blame."

See images of 'Authorities'

Etymology of 'Authorities'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Authorities" Quotes from Famous Books

... spreading from that house to other houses by the visible unwary conversing with those who were sick, and the infecting the parish officers who were employed about persons dead; and the like. These are known authorities for this great foundation point, that it went on and proceeded from person to person, and from house to house, and no otherwise. In the first house that was infected, there died four persons. A neighbor, hearing the mistress of the first house was sick, went to visit ...

— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe

... the executions of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a ...

— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... Ornament and Costume, compiled from Ancient Authorities and Examples. By A. Welby Pugin, Architect.... Enlarged and revised by the Rev. Bernard Smith, M.A. Third ...

— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley

... German, or Italian authors. And indeed in the substance of his thought I wonder if he is sufficiently hospitable to foreign ideas, especially to the vast body of comment on the French Revolution. I imagine few Continental authorities would agree with him in his comparatively low estimate of the importance of that great movement, which he seems to regard ...

— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... conducting and for the support of which they at their recent convention in Kansas City, voted to raise a fund of $500,000, is being carried on by the grossest chicanery and misrepresentation. Pseudo-scientific men are being put before the public as great authorities in human nutrition and these men are sending out plausible but most misleading eulogies of meat as a foodstuff possessing essential qualities for the lack of which the American people are suffering. The only possible reason for these frantic appeals to the American people to consume more meat ...

— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

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