(formal) allowed or recognized by law; legal:
his lawful heir / wife * Can an act that causes death ever be lawful?
OPPUNLAWFUL
lawfully adverb:
a lawfully elected government * The jury agreed that the doctor had acted lawfully.
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WHICHWORD?
lawful / legal
Lawful and legal can both mean 'allowed by law': by lawful/legal means. Lawful tends to be used in technical or literary contexts. The same is true of the opposites, unlawful and illegal, but illegal is used especially about criminal activities. Legal also means 'connected with the law': the US legal system.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for lawful is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is lawful a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, lawful is tagged as adjective.
Does lawful appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — lawful appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
