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Prerogative   /prɪrˈɑgətɪv/  /pˈərˈɑgətɪv/   Listen
noun
Prerogative  n.  
1.
An exclusive or peculiar privilege; prior and indefeasible right; fundamental and essential possession; used generally of an official and hereditary right which may be asserted without question, and for the exercise of which there is no responsibility or accountability as to the fact and the manner of its exercise. "The two faculties that are the prerogative of man the powers of abstraction and imagination." "An unconstitutional exercise of his prerogative."
2.
Precedence; preeminence; first rank. (Obs.) "Then give me leave to have prerogative." Note: The term came into general use in the conflicts between the Crown and Parliaments of Great Britain, especially in the time of the Stuarts.
Prerogative Court (Eng. Law), a court which formerly had authority in the matter of wills and administrations, where the deceased left bona notabilia, or effects of the value of five pounds, in two or more different dioceses.
Prerogative office, the office in which wills proved in the Prerogative Court were registered.
Synonyms: Privilege; right. See Privilege.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prerogative" Quotes from Famous Books



... breadth—and how absurd it is to require of us to draw it! And would not a country-bumpkin feel as much insulted, if we told him he was a "carnivorous ape," or a "mammiferous two-handed animal," as the French soldier did when his officer called him a biped? If we give man his old prerogative, a "rational animal," how many would refuse the title to pretty women and spendthrift sons, while others would most willingly bestow ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... own origination." So that I may fitly close this branch of the subject by applying to Shakespeare a very noteworthy saying of Burke's, the argument of which holds no less true of the law-making prerogative in Art than in the State: "Legislators have no other rules to bind them but the great principles of reason and equity, and the general sense of mankind. These they are bound to obey and follow; and rather to enlarge and enlighten law by the liberality of legislative reason, than to fetter and bind ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... the name of honor. Our Charles Eliots and Nicholas Butlers, our Albert Shaws and Hamilton Holts, now plead for universal peace through unlimited arbitration. Senators Bacon and Lodge and Heyburn and Hitchcock, apparently impelled by constitutional prerogative, party prejudice, or personal animosity, now cast their votes for limitations in the name of honor. From the platform of peace conferences, from the halls of colleges, from the pulpit and the bench, from the offices of bankers and merchants ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... and the rapacity of princes? Odo listened with growing interest while Crescenti, encouraged by his questions, pointed out how the abuses of feudalism had arisen from the small land-owner's need of protection against the northern invader, as the concentration of royal prerogative had been the outcome of the king's intervention between his great vassals and the communes. The discouragement which had obscured Odo's outlook since his visit to Pontesordo was cleared away by the discovery that in a sympathetic study of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... had found both easy and safe. To which, if we add, that monarchy being simple, and most obvious to men, whom neither experience had instructed in forms of government, nor the ambition or insolence of empire had taught to beware of the encroachments of prerogative, or the inconveniences of absolute power, which monarchy in succession was apt to lay claim to, and bring upon them, it was not at all strange, that they should not much trouble themselves to think of methods of restraining ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke


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