LAWFULLY

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does lawfully mean? 

• LAWFULLY (adverb)
  The adverb LAWFULLY has 2 senses:

1. in a manner acceptable to common custom

2. by law; conforming to the law

  Familiarity information: LAWFULLY used as an adverb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LAWFULLY (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

In a manner acceptable to common custom

Synonyms:

lawfully; legitimately; licitly

Context example:

you cannot do this legitimately!

Antonym:

lawlessly (in an illegal manner)

Pertainym:

lawful (conformable to or allowed by law)

Sense 2

Meaning:

By law; conforming to the law

Synonyms:

de jure; lawfully; legally

Context example:

we are lawfully wedded now

Antonym:

unlawfully (not conforming to the law)

Pertainym:

lawful (authorized, sanctioned by, or in accordance with law)

 Context examples 

Well, if they can be easy with an estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the better.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Isabella stept in after her father; John Knightley, forgetting that he did not belong to their party, stept in after his wife very naturally; so that Emma found, on being escorted and followed into the second carriage by Mr. Elton, that the door was to be lawfully shut on them, and that they were to have a tete-a-tete drive.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

However, if those whom it more concerns think fit to be of another opinion, I am ready to depose, when I shall be lawfully called, that no European did ever visit those countries before me.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed), that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's Word doth allow, are not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

If a prince sends forces into a nation, where the people are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to death, and make slaves of the rest, in order to civilize and reduce them from their barbarous way of living.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)