Etimology
From Middle English lawier, lawyer, lawer, equivalent to law + -yer.
noun
lawyer (plural lawyers)
A professional person with a graduate law degree that qualifies for legal work (such as Juris Doctor)
A professional person qualified (as by a law degree or bar exam) and authorized to practice law as an attorney-at-law, solicitor, advocate, barrister or equivalent, i.e. represent parties in lawsuits or trials and give legal advice.
(by extension) A legal layman who argues points of law.
(UK, colloquial) The burbot.
(UK, dialect) The stem of a bramble.
Any of various plants that have hooked thorns.
Examples
His forefathers had been, as a rule, professional men—physicians and lawyers; his grandfather died under the walls of Chapultepec Castle while twisting a tourniquet for a cursing dragoon; an uncle remained indefinitely at Malvern Hill; […].
A lawyer's time and advice are his stock in trade. - aphorism often credited to Abraham Lincoln, but without attestation
The species of Eugnomus are very partial to the lawyer when in bloom.
In the lawyer a considerable differentiation has taken place. All the alllies of this plant , exhibit a strong development of epidermal structures in the form of hooks, spines, or hairs, but in none are these structures so perfect as in our lawyer.
A plant that is excessively troublesome in the localities where the native vegetation has been least disturbed is the “lawyer” .
Besides the bags and nets common throughout the continent, these tribes have water-bags, which they make of closely-plaited “lawyer” , and also of palm-leaf sewn with the sinews of animals.
The nest was a foot or two from the ground, and placed in a bunch of lawyer canes.
This lawyer is a climbing palm, throwing up shoots from its roots as thick as a man's finger and tough as wire, covered with sharp spines, and bearing much divided leaves, alternating with tendrils twenty feel long.
They were usually very neatly laid out under arching masses of the exasperating lawyer-palm vines , and consequently not too easy to examine.
Lawyer Vine , also known as Hairy Mary and Wait-a-while, is actually a palm, that grows in long canes that loop and snake through the undergrowth.
The trail of the lawyer vine , with its leaf sheath and long tentacles bristling with incurved hooks, is over it all.
The stems of the "lawyer vine" , buz or buzi , boz , are used in house-building, tying fences, etc.
Related words
synonyms
advocate
attorney
counselor
verb
lawyer (third-person singular simple present lawyers, present participle lawyering, simple past and past participle lawyered)
(informal, intransitive) To practice law.
(intransitive) To perform, or attempt to perform, the work of a lawyer.
(intransitive) To make legalistic arguments.
(informal, transitive) To barrage (a person) with questions in order to get them to admit something.
Examples
You've been lawyered!
Related words
related terms
lawyer up