Rules

How to spell rules

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rules

What does rules mean?

1. nounStatements that set out what is permitted or required in an activity, place, or system.
2. verbExercises governing power or control over a place or group.

Rules in a sentence

• noun

  The new safety rules apply to every contractor on site.

• verb

  The monarch reigns but no longer rules the country directly.

• noun

  The board agreed to relax the parking rules for residents.

• verb

  A single supplier rules the entire regional market.

Where does rules come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin regula, which literally meant a straight stick or ruler used by carpenters, and from there came to mean a pattern, model, or standard to follow. The same root sits behind the verb regere, 'to guide straight or to govern', and relatives such as 'regular' and 'regulate' share that ancestry. It passed into Old French as reule or riule before reaching English in the 1200s, where it took the spelling 'rule'. The early sense of a physical measuring stick survives today in the ruler you draw lines with, while the figurative sense of a principle to be obeyed grew alongside it. Adding -s gives either the plural set of regulations or the present-tense verb, both spelled the same way.

How the word is built

• rule (from Latin regula: a straight stick, pattern)
• -s (plural noun / third-person verb ending)