DECREE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Decree

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/dɪkrˈi/ Listen

noun

Decree n.

An order from one having authority, deciding what is to be done by a subordinate; also, a determination by one having power, deciding what is to be done or to take place; edict, law. "The decrees of Venice." "There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed." "Poor hand, why quiverest thou at this decree?"

(Law)

(a)

A decision, order, or sentence, given in a cause by a court of equity or admiralty.

(b)

A determination or judgment of an umpire on a case submitted to him.

(Eccl.) An edict or law made by a council for regulating any business within their jurisdiction; as, the decrees of ecclesiastical councils.

Synonyms: Law; regulation; edict; ordinance. See Law.

verb

Decree v. t. (past & past part. decreed; pres. part. decreeing)

To determine judicially by authority, or by decree; to constitute by edict; to appoint by decree or law; to determine; to order; to ordain; as, a court decrees a restoration of property. "Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee."

To ordain by fate.

Decree v. i. To make decrees; used absolutely. "Father eternal! thine is to decree; Mine, both in heaven and earth to do thy will."

See images of 'Decree'

Etymology of 'Decree'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Decree" Quotes from Famous Books

... accordance with its own predecessors and patterns in the seventeenth century, always maintained, during its earlier and better period, a higher standard of scholarship and of general literary culture. Its early efforts in fiction—according to the curious and most interesting law which seems to decree that every subdivision of a kind shall go through something like the vicissitudes of the kind at large—were not strictly novels but romance, and romance of the allegorical kind. In the late thirties and early forties the allegorists, ...

— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... evidence against himself. He declared his feelings to Paoli, as he had done to Johnson, whose curt advice had been not to confuse or resolve the common consequences of irregularity into an unalterable decree of destiny. To the general he now attributed his feeling of the vanity of life, the exhaustion in the very heat of youth of all the sweets of being, and the incapacity for taking part in active life to his ...

— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... increased. Millions upon millions of bank paper have been added to the circulation. Everywhere, and nowhere so much as where the present administration and its measures have been most zealously supported, banks have multiplied under State authority, since the decree was made that the Bank of the United States should be suffered to expire. Look at Mississippi, Missouri, Louisiana, Virginia, and other States. Do we not see that banking capital and bank paper are enormously increasing? The opposition to banks, therefore, so much professed, whether it be ...

— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... nation shall be annihilated at the close of the thirteenth generation. Ten have already passed, and that now living has appointed ceremonies to propitiate the powers of heaven, and mitigate its stern decree.[220-3] Well may they be about it, for there is a gloomy probability that the warning came from no false prophet. Few tribes were destitute of such presentiments. The Chikasaw, the Mandans of the Missouri, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, ...

— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... not only by all the residents, but by many of the farmers and their families. The countess had already received several warnings from the Catholic authorities of the province; but to these she paid no attention, and there were no forces available to enforce the decree in her case, as it would require nothing short of an army to overcome the opposition that might be expected, joined as she would be by the other Huguenot ...

— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

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