writs

Noun

writ (countable and uncountable, plural writs)

1. (countable) A written order, issued by a court, ordering someone to do (or stop doing) something.
2. (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, countable) A document ordering that an election be conducted.
3. (UK, countable) An order issued by the House of Lords summoning peers to the Chamber.
4. (uncountable) Authority, power to enforce compliance.
   • We can't let them take advantage of the fact that there are so many areas of the world where no one's writ runs.2009, Stephen Gale et al., The War on Terrorism: 21st-Century Perspectives, Transaction Publishers, →ISBN, page 30
5. (archaic) That which is written; writing.
   • Then to his hands that writ he did betake, / Which he disclosing, red thus, as the paper spake.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 25