Definition of rule

"rule" in the noun sense

1. rule, regulation

a principle or condition that customarily governs behavior

"it was his rule to take a walk before breakfast"

"short haircuts were the regulation"

2. convention, normal, pattern, rule, formula

something regarded as a normative example

"the convention of not naming the main character"

"violence is the rule not the exception"

"his formula for impressing visitors"

3. rule, prescript

prescribed guide for conduct or action

4. rule, linguistic rule

linguistics) a rule describing (or prescribing) a linguistic practice

5. principle, rule

a basic generalization that is accepted as true and that can be used as a basis for reasoning or conduct

"their principles of composition characterized all their works"

6. rule

the duration of a monarch's or government's power

"during the rule of Elizabeth"

7. dominion, rule

dominance or power through legal authority

"France held undisputed dominion over vast areas of Africa"

"the rule of Caesar"

8. rule

directions that define the way a game or sport is to be conducted

"he knew the rules of chess"

9. rule

any one of a systematic body of regulations defining the way of life of members of a religious order

"the rule of St. Dominic"

10. principle, rule

a rule or law concerning a natural phenomenon or the function of a complex system

"the principle of the conservation of mass"

"the principle of jet propulsion"

"the right-hand rule for inductive fields"

11. rule, formula

mathematics) a standard procedure for solving a class of mathematical problems

"he determined the upper bound with Descartes' rule of signs"

"he gave us a general formula for attacking polynomials"

12. rule, ruler

measuring stick consisting of a strip of wood or metal or plastic with a straight edge that is used for drawing straight lines and measuring lengths

"rule" in the verb sense

1. govern, rule

exercise authority over as of nations

"Who is governing the country now?"

2. rule, decree

decide with authority

"The King decreed that all firstborn males should be killed"

3. predominate, dominate, rule, reign, prevail

be larger in number, quantity, power, status or importance

"Money reigns supreme here"

"Hispanics predominate in this neighborhood"

4. rule, find

decide on and make a declaration about

"find someone guilty"

5. rule

have an affinity with of signs of the zodiac

6. rule

mark or draw with a ruler

"rule the margins"

7. rule, harness, rein

keep in check

"rule one's temper"

Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)

Princeton University "About WordNet®."
WordNet®. Princeton University. 2010.


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Quotations for rule

Once is no rule. [ Proverb ]

Made exactly by rule.

Riches rule the roast. [ Proverb ]

Thoughts rule the world. [ Emerson ]

A community is as those who rule it. [ Cicero ]

Born to excel, and to command!
As by transcendent beauty to attract
All eyes, so by pre-eminence of soul
To rule all hearts. [ Congreve ]

Resolved to ruin or to rule the state. [ John Dryden ]

The wise man is born to rule the fool. [ Proverb ]

Equality is no rule in Love's grammar. [ Beaumont and Fletcher ]

Appearances deceive
And this one maxim is a standing rule:
Men are not what they seem. [ Havard ]

Accidents rule men, not men accidents. [ Herodotus ]

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword. [ Edward Bulwer Lytton ]

Let them obey that know not how to rule. [ William Shakespeare ]

Mercy to him that shows it, is the rule. [ Cowper ]

Prejudices are what rule the vulgar crowd. [ Voltaire ]

Ye realms, yet unrevealed to human sight,
Ye gods who rule the regions of the night.
Ye gliding ghosts permit me to relate
The mystic wonders of your silent state. [ Dryden ]

By misgovernment the supreme rule is lost. [ Publius Syrus ]

Rule, Britannia, Britannia rules the waves;
Britons never shall be slaves. [ Thomson ]

It is no sure rule to fish with a cross-bow. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch enchanter's wand! itself a nothing!
But taking sorcery from the master hand.
To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless! [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

There is no usual rule without an exception. [ Proverb ]

Grief hath two tongues; and never woman yet
Could rule them both without ten women's wit. [ William Shakespeare ]

Ease leads to habit, as success to ease.
He lives by rule who lives himself to please. [ Crabbe ]

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law. [ Goldsmith ]

The male alone has been appointed to bear rule. [ Molière ]

Nothing can be lasting when reason does not rule. [ Quintus Curtius Rufus ]

So work the honey-bees;
Creatures, that by a rule in nature teach
The art of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage they, with merry march, bring home.
To the tent royal of their emperor;
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum.
Delivering over to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone. [ William Shakespeare ]

True friendship's laws are by this rule expressed.
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. [ Homer, Pope's Odyssey ]

The first rule for speaking well is to think well. [ Mme. de Lambert ]

Silver, though white.
Yet it draws black lines; it shall not rule my palm
There to mark forth its base corruption. [ Middleton and Rowley ]

To rule one's anger is well; to prevent it is better. [ Edwards ]

Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small. [ Edmund Spenser ]

No rule is so general, which admits not some exception. [ Burton ]

Hard is the factor's rule; no better is the minister's. [ Gaelic Proverb ]

Oblivion is the rule, and fame the exception, of humanity. [ Rivarol ]

There is a grace in wild variety surpassing rule and order. [ William Mason ]

Downright admonition, as a rule, is too blunt for the recipient. [ Beecher ]

No man doth safely rule but he that hath learned gladly to obey. [ Thomas à Kempis ]

The great rule of moral conduct is, next to God, to respect time. [ Lavater ]

Nothing ages women so rapidly as having married the general rule. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]

Have a rule apportioning to each offence its appropriate penalty. [ Horace ]

Much more profitable and gracious is doctrine by example than by rule. [ Spenser ]

Practice must settle the habit of doing without reflecting on the rule. [ Locke ]

The more sincere we are in our belief, as a rule, the less demonstrative we are. [ Beecher ]

Amiability is very often a weakness, but the most unobjectionable one as a rule. [ Lady Morgan ]

Rule your spirit well, for if it is not subject to you, it will lord it over you. [ Horace ]

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold, alike fantastic if too new or old. [ Pope ]

Women are perfectly well aware that the more they seem to obey, the more they rule. [ Michelet ]

A woman's friendship is, as a rule, the legacy of love or the alms of indifference.

The government will take the fairest of names, but the worst of realities - mob rule. [ Polybius ]

The first, as indeed the last, nobility of education is in the rule over our thoughts. [ John Ruskin ]

I take it to be a principal rule of life, not to be too much addicted to any one thing. [ Terence ]

Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by, love; this is an old rule. [ Buddha ]

I have made it a rule never to be with a person ten minutes without trying to make him happier. [ Dr. Raffler ]

Free people, remember this rule: you may acquire liberty, but never regain it if you once lose it. [ Rousseau ]

The Golden Rule Of Three.

Three things to be - pure, just and honest.
Three things to govern - temper, tongue and conduct.
Three things to live - courage, affection and gentleness.
Three things to love - the wise, the virtuous and the innocent.
Three things to commend - thrift, industry and promptness.
Three things about which to think - life, death and eternity.
Three things to despise - cruelty, arrogance and ingratitude.
Three things to admire - dignity, gracefulness and intellectual power.
Three things to cherish - the true, the beautiful and the good.
Three things for which to wish - health, friends and contentment.
Three things for which to fight - honor, home and country.
Three things to attain - goodness of heart, integrity of purpose and cheerfulness of disposition.
Three things to give - alms to the needy, comfort to the sad and appreciation to the worthy.
Three things to desire - the blessing of God, an approving conscience and the fellowship of the good.
Three things for which to work - a trained mind, a skilled hand and a regulated heart.
Three things for which to hope - a haven of peace, a robe of righteousness and the crown of life. [ Beattie ]

So work the honey-bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom. [ William Shakespeare ]

Chance suggests thoughts; changes deprive us of them: there is no rule for preserving or acquiring them. [ Pascal ]

Act always so that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for all intelligent beings. [ Kant ]

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Ah! when shall all men's good be each man's rule, and universal peace lie like a shaft of light across the land? [ Tennyson ]

Philosophy consists not in airy schemes or idle speculations; the rule and conduct of all social life is her great province. [ Thomson ]

Voltaire inscribed on a statue of Love: Whoever thou art, behold thy master! He rules thee, or has ruled thee, or will rule thee!

No dynamite will ever be invented that can rule; it can but dissolve and destroy. Only the word of God and the heart of man can govern. [ John Ruskin ]

It is a certain rule that wit and passion are entirely incompatible. When the affections are moved, there is no place for the imagination. [ Hume ]

Human action is a seed of circumstances scattered in the dark land of the future and hopefully left to the powers that rule human destiny. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

Fix yourself upon the wealthy. In a word, take this for a golden rule through life: Never, never have a friend that is poorer than yourself. [ Douglas Jerrold ]

Let our reason, and not our senses, be the rule of our conduct: for reason will teach us to think wisely, to speak prudently, and to behave worthily. [ Confucius ]

It is a general rule, one at least to which I know no exceptions, that all superior men inherit the elements of their superiority from their mothers. [ Michelet ]

I won't rule out direct talks with Kim Jong Un, I just won't. As far as the risk of dealing with a madman is concerned, that's his problem, not mine. [ President Donald Trump, Gridiron Club's 133rd Anniversary Spring Dinner, March 3, 2018 ]

It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life. [ Swift ]

It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek for no other rule to judge the work by; it is good, and made by a good workman. [ Bruyere ]

Not to know what happened before we were born is always to remain a child; to know, and blindly to adopt that knowledge as an implicit rule of life, is never to be a man. [ Chatfield ]

When what you read elevates your mind and fills you with noble aspirations, look for no other rule by which to judge a book; it is good, and is the work of a master-hand. [ La Bruyere ]

Those who make antitheses by forcing the sense are like men who make false windows for the sake of symmetry. Their rule is not to speak justly, but to make accurate figures. [ Pascal ]

I have strictly adhered to the rule of never copying. I write at once as I intend the words to stand. This leads to great precision of thought, and makes the style fresh and vigorous. [ Louisa Molesworth, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

True generosity is a duty as indispensably necessary as those imposed upon us by the law. It is a rule imposed upon us by reason, which should be the sovereign law of a rational being. [ Goldsmith ]

It may be laid down as a general rule that no woman who hath any great pretensions to admiration is ever well pleased in a company where she perceives herself to fill only a second place. [ Fielding ]

The era of Christianity - peace, brotherhood, the Golden Rule as applied to governmental matters - is yet to come, and when it comes, then, and then only, will the future of nations be sure. [ Kossuth ]

It is a good and safe rule to sojourn in every place, as if you meant to spend your life there, never omitting an opportunity of doing a kindness, or speaking a true word, or making a friend. [ Ruskin ]

It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion. [ Emerson ]

As for drinking, I have no rule about that. When the others drink I like to help; otherwise I remain dry, by habit and preference. This dryness does not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because you are different. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

That policy that can strike only while the iron is hot will be overcome by that perseverance which, like Cromwell's, can make the iron hot by striking; and he that can only rule the storm must yield to him who can both raise and rule it. [ Colton ]

Society is a necessary thing. No man has any real success in this world unless he has women to back him, and women rule society. If you have not got women on your side you are quite over. You might as well be a barrister, or a stock-broker, or a journalist at once. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

If often happens too, both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together - a main plot and an underplot; and he that understands only one of them will, in all probability, be the dupe of both. A mistress may rule a monarch, but some obscure favorite may rule the mistress. [ Colton ]

As a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner; and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, snivelling bit of saintship about him which is enough to make him a humbug. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

In some exquisite critical hints on Eurythmy. Goethe remarks, that the best composition in pictures is that which, observing the most delicate laws of harmony, so arranges the objects that they by their position tell their own story. And the rule thus applied to composition in painting applies no less to composition in literature. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

The invention of printing added a new element of power to the race. From that hour, in a most especial sense, the brain and not the arm, the thinker and not the soldier, books and not kings, were to rule the world; and weapons, forged in the mind, keen-edged and brighter than the sunbeam, were to supplant the sword and the battle-axe. [ Whipple ]

We must have kings, we must have nobles; nature is always providing such in every society; only let us have the real instead of the titular. In every society some are born to rule, and some to advise. The chief is the chief all the world over, only not his cap and plume. It is only this dislike of the pretender which makes men sometimes unjust to the true and finished man. [ Emerson ]

If the man be really the weaker vessel, and the rule is necessarily in the Wife's hands, how is it then to be? To tell the truth, I believe that the really loving, good wife never finds it out. She keeps the glamor of love and loyalty between herself and her husband, and so infuses herself into him that the weakness never becomes apparent either to her or to him or to most lookers-on. [ Charlotte M. Yonge ]

We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. Since forty I have been regular about going to bed and getting up - and that is one of the main things. I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I had to. This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity. It has saved me sound, but it would injure another person. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when I began to smoke, I only know that it was in my father's lifetime, and that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I was a shade past eleven; ever since then I have smoked publicly. As an example to others, and - not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake. It is a good rule. I mean, for me; but some of you know quite well that it wouldn't answer for everybody that's trying to get to be seventy. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

rule in Scrabble®

The word rule is playable in Scrabble®, no blanks required.

Scrabble® Letter Score: 4

Highest Scoring Scrabble® Plays In The Letters rule:

RULE
(15)
LURE
(15)
RULE
(15)
LURE
(15)
 

All Scrabble® Plays For The Word rule

RULE
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RULE
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RULE
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The 92 Highest Scoring Scrabble® Plays For Words Using The Letters In rule

RULE
(15)
LURE
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RULE
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LURE
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RULE
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LURE
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LURE
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RULE
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LEU
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RUE
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RUE
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RUE
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RULE
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LURE
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rule in Words With Friends™

The word rule is playable in Words With Friends™, no blanks required.

Words With Friends™ Letter Score: 6

Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Play In The Letters rule:

LURE
(30)
 

All Words With Friends™ Plays For The Word rule

RULE
(24)
RULE
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RULE
(18)
RULE
(18)
RULE
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RULE
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RULE
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RULE
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RULE
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The 100 Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Plays Using The Letters In rule

LURE
(30)
RULE
(24)
RULE
(24)
LURE
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LURE
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RULE
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Word Growth involving rule

Shorter words in rule

(No shorter words found)

Longer words containing rule

barrulet barrulets

cerulean ceruleans

cerulein ceruleins

ceruleite

ceruleous

ceruletide ceruletides

ceruleum

coeruleolactite coeruleolactites

misrule misruled

misrule misruler misrulers

misrule misrules

overrule overruled

overrule overruler overrulers

overrule overrules

perule

puberulent

pulverulent

purulence mucopurulence

purulent mucopurulent

rulebook rulebooks

ruled misruled

ruled overruled

ruled unruled

ruleless

rulemonger rulemongered

rulemonger rulemongerer rulemongerers

rulemonger rulemongeries

rulemonger rulemongering

rulemonger rulemongers

rulemonger rulemongery

ruler misruler misrulers

ruler overruler overrulers

ruler rulers misrulers

ruler rulers overrulers

ruler rulers rulership

rules cerulescent

rules misrules

rules overrules

rules selfrules

rules spherules hemispherules

rules spherules microspherules

rules sporules

rules subrules

rules zebrules

selfrule selfrules

spherule hemispherule hemispherules

spherule microspherule microspherules

spherule spherules hemispherules

spherule spherules microspherules

sporule sporules

subrule subrules

virulence virulences

virulencies

virulency

virulent nonvirulent

virulent supervirulent supervirulently

virulent virulently supervirulently

virulent virulentness

zebrule zebrules