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liberum veto

liberum veto noun: a parliamentary rule in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, allowing any dissenting member of the legislature to force an immediate end to the current session and nullify any legislation that had already been passed.

Noun

liberum veto

  1. (historical) A parliamentary rule in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, allowing any dissenting member of the legislature to force an immediate end to the current session and nullify any legislation that had already been passed.
  2. (broadly) Any system in which a single dissenting member can unilaterally block an action.
    • The US, Russia, UK, France, and China have liberum veto power in the UN Security Council, allowing them to shield themselves and their allies from UN oversight.

Origin of liberum veto

Borrowed from Polish liberum veto.

Questions about liberum veto

What does liberum veto mean?
Liberum veto means a parliamentary rule in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, allowing any dissenting member of the legislature to force an immediate end to the current session and nullify any legislation that had already been passed.
What part of speech is liberum veto?
Liberum veto is a noun.

Words near liberum veto in the dictionary

  1. libertyless
  2. libertyman
  3. libertymen
  4. Libertys
  5. Libertyville
  6. liberum veto
  7. Libet
  8. libethenite
  9. Libetian
  10. Libetians
  11. libfem

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: liberum veto (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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