Word of the Day:
authority
What It Means
Power or right to make or enforce rules, give orders, or impose obligation; or a position having such power or right.
Persons, regarded collectively, who occupy official positions of power; police or law enforcement.
A reliable, definitive source of information on a subject.
Due to being inadequate for the deductive method of reasoning, the argument from authority is considered a logical fallacy.
Authority in Context
“Authority to construct eight carriages, to test the new design in public service, had already been given; but of course complete working drawings had first to be prepared.”
Did You Know?
From Middle English auctorite, autorite (“authority, book or quotation that settles an argument”), from Old French auctorité, from Latin stem of auctōritās (“invention, advice, opinion, influence, command”), from auctor (“master, leader, author”). For the presence of the h, compare the etymology of author.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: authority (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “authority.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/authority. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
