Word.ws English Dictionary

sumptuary laws

sumptuary laws is the plural of sumptuary law.

Meaning of sumptuary law

Noun

sumptuary law (plural sumptuary laws)

  1. (historical) A law that attempts to regulate permitted consumption, especially of clothing, food, and luxury expenditures.
    • The Sumptuary Laws have fallen into such a state of desuetude as was never before seen. Our fashionable coat is an amphibium between barn-sack and drayman’s doublet.1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, chapter XIII, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book III (The Modern Worker)

Questions about sumptuary laws

What is sumptuary laws the plural of?
Sumptuary laws is the plural of sumptuary law.

Words near sumptuary laws in the dictionary

  1. sumptiously
  2. sumptuaries
  3. sumptuarily
  4. sumptuary
  5. sumptuary law
  6. sumptuary laws
  7. sumptuary tax
  8. sumptuary taxes
  9. sumptuosities
  10. sumptuosity
  11. sumptuous

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sumptuary laws (page history and authors); sumptuary law (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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