GOVERN • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Govern

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/gˈəvərn/ Listen

verb

Govern v. t. (past & past part. governed; pres. part. governing)

To direct and control, as the actions or conduct of men, either by established laws or by arbitrary will; to regulate by authority. "Fit to govern and rule multitudes."

To regulate; to influence; to direct; to restrain; to manage; as, to govern the life; to govern a horse. "Govern well thy appetite."

(Gram.) To require to be in a particular case; as, a transitive verb governs a noun in the objective case; or to require (a particular case); as, a transitive verb governs the objective case.

Govern v. i. To exercise authority; to administer the laws; to have the control.

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Etymology of 'Govern'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Govern" Quotes from Famous Books

... to-morrow and say: 'Look here, you are going to govern yourselves. I have no power; I won't order anyone to do anything; I won't punish anyone. Now, do what ...

— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill

... whom it is easy and right to choose their own way; their happiness robs no one. There are others on whom a charge has been laid from their childhood, a charge perhaps'—and her voice faltered at last—'impressed on them by dying lips, which must govern, possess their lives; which it would be baseness, treason, to betray. We are not here ...

— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... by convulsive cramps, by the scars of that distemper which it was once imagined the royal touch could cure, and by a slovenly mode of dress. He had the use only of one eye; yet so much does mind govern and even supply the deficiency of organs, that his visual perceptions, as far as they extended, were uncommonly quick and accurate[1286]. So morbid was his temperament, that he never knew the natural joy of a free and vigorous use of his limbs: when he walked, it was like the struggling gait ...

— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... a quarter of a mile. The hand-sleds employed, were of a size and construction suited to the dimensions of those that used them; and, as a matter of course, there was no New Yorker that had not learned how to govern the motion of one of these vehicles, even when gliding down the steepest descent, with the nicest delicacy and greatest ease. As children, or boys as late in life as fourteen even, every male in the colony, and not a few of the females, had acquired this art; but this was the ...

— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... infidelity to deaden the emotions of patriotism, and that country can hardly expect to prove successful if it engage in war while its citizens are imbued with religious doubt. If lands are conquered, it knows not how to govern them; if defeated, skepticism affords but little comfort in the night of disaster. We do not attach a fictitious importance to Rationalism when we say that it was the prime agent which prevented the Germans from the struggle of self-liberation, ...

— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

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