Outlawings

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of declaring something illegal or prohibiting it through legal means
2. The process of imposing bans that make certain actions or behaviors punishable under the law
3. The formal declaration that a particular practice or individual is outside the protection of the law and therefore subject to penalties

Etymology: "Outlawings" is the plural of "outlawing," a noun formed from the verb "outlaw" and the suffix "-ing," which turns an action into a noun. The verb "outlaw" is much older than its modern sense of a bandit. In Old English, an "utlaga" was a person deprived of the law's protection, so anyone could harm or kill them without penalty. The word combines "ut," meaning "out," with "lagu," meaning "law," which came from Old Norse "lag" and entered English in the Middle Ages. The sense of putting something under a legal ban, as in "outlawings of certain practices," developed later as the verb came to mean declaring an activity illegal rather than declaring a person outside the law. The plural form, "outlawings," refers to several separate acts or instances of this kind of prohibition.

Synonyms: prohibitions, bannings, forbidings, criminalizations

Antonyms: allowances, permissions, legalizations, approvals