UNLAWFUL

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does unlawful mean? 

• UNLAWFUL (adjective)
  The adjective UNLAWFUL has 5 senses:

1. not conforming to legality, moral law, or social convention

2. contrary to or prohibited by or defiant of law

3. not morally right or permissible

4. having no legally established claim

5. contrary to or forbidden by law

  Familiarity information: UNLAWFUL used as an adjective is common.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNLAWFUL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Not conforming to legality, moral law, or social convention

Synonyms:

improper; unconventional; unlawful

Context example:

improper banking practices

Similar:

irregular (contrary to rule or accepted order or general practice)

Derivation:

unlawfulness (the quality of failing to conform to law)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Contrary to or prohibited by or defiant of law

Context example:

unlawful hunters

Similar:

lawless; outlaw (disobedient to or defiant of law)

lawless; wide-open (lax in enforcing laws)

wrongful (unlawfully violating the rights of others)

Also:

illegal (prohibited by law or by official or accepted rules)

corrupt; crooked (not straight; dishonest or immoral or evasive)

Attribute:

lawfulness (the quality of conforming to law)

Antonym:

lawful (conformable to or allowed by law)

Derivation:

unlawfulness (the quality of failing to conform to law)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Not morally right or permissible

Context example:

unlawful love

Similar:

illicit (contrary to accepted morality (especially sexual morality) or convention)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Having no legally established claim

Synonyms:

unlawful; wrongful

Context example:

the wrongful heir to the throne

Similar:

illegitimate (of marriages and offspring; not recognized as lawful)

Derivation:

unlawfulness (the quality of failing to conform to law)

Sense 5

Meaning:

Contrary to or forbidden by law

Synonyms:

illegitimate; illicit; outlaw; outlawed; unlawful

Context example:

unlawful measures

Similar:

illegal (prohibited by law or by official or accepted rules)

Derivation:

unlawfulness (the quality of failing to conform to law)

 Context examples 

The results of what you have done become in time to you utterly insupportable; you take measures to obtain relief: unusual measures, but neither unlawful nor culpable.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I can tell you, gentlemen, that the gulf which can be bridged by unlawful love can be spanned also by an unlawful hatred, and that upon the day when this young man stole from me all that made my life worth living, I vowed to Heaven that I should take from him that foul life of his, though the deed would cover but the tiniest fraction of the debt which he owed me.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Twenty Eight, returned my informant, speaking throughout in a low tone, and looking over his shoulder as we walked along the passage, to guard himself from being overheard, in such an unlawful reference to these Immaculates, by Creakle and the rest; Twenty Eight (also transportation) got a place, and robbed a young master of a matter of two hundred and fifty pounds in money and valuables, the night before they were going abroad.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)