Word.ws English Dictionary

lawbreaking

lawbreaking adjective: unlawful; illegal.

Adjective

lawbreaking (no attested comparative, superlative most lawbreaking)

  1. unlawful; illegal.
    • We have a place for lawbreaking citizens like you.
    • To make this penalty hang like a Sword of Damocles over every lawbreaking alien apprehended in this country1994 April 19, “LETTERS TO THE EDITOR”, in San Francisco Chronicle, page A18

Noun

lawbreaking (plural lawbreakings)

  1. The commission of a criminal act, the violation or breaking of a law.
    • His lawbreaking ended only when he was hanged for it.

Synonyms of lawbreaking

6 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of lawbreaking

Forms of lawbreaking

Adjective
superlativemost lawbreaking
alternative formlaw-breaking
Noun
plurallawbreakings

Origin of lawbreaking

From law + breaking.

Questions about lawbreaking

What does lawbreaking mean?
Lawbreaking means unlawful; illegal.
What part of speech is lawbreaking?
Lawbreaking can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near lawbreaking in the dictionary

  1. lawbooks
  2. lawbot
  3. lawbots
  4. lawbreaker
  5. lawbreakers
  6. lawbreaking
  7. lawbreakings
  8. lawburrows
  9. lawclerk
  10. lawclerks
  11. lawcode

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lawbreaking (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “lawbreaking.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lawbreaking. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.