lawyer

plural lawyers · alternative obsolete lawer

1. A professional person with a graduate law degree that qualifies for legal work (such as Juris Doctor)
2. A professional person qualified (as by a law degree or bar exam) and authorized to practice law as an attorney-at-law, solicitor, advocate, barrister or equivalent, i.e. represent parties in lawsuits or trials and give legal advice.

   A lawyer's time and advice are his stock in trade. [one of various versions of an aphorism in law]

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   His forefathers had been, as a rule, professional men—physicians and lawyers; his grandfather died under the walls of Chapultepec Castle while twisting a tourniquet for a cursing dragoon; an uncle remained indefinitely at Malvern Hill;[…].

   1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter II, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC

   Mr. Wells was a pleasant man of middle-age, with keen eyes, and the typical lawyer’s mouth.

   1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 59

   Synonyms: advocate, attorney, counselor

3. broadlyA legal layman who argues points of law.
4. UKcolloquialThe burbot.
5. UKdialectalThe stem of a bramble.
6. Any of various plants that have hooked thorns.
   1. A relative of the raspberry found in Australia and New Zealand, Rubus australis

      The species of Eugnomus are very partial to the lawyer (Rubus australis ) when in bloom.

      1881 April, George M. Thomson, “On the Fertilization of New Zealand Flowering Plants”, in Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, volume 13, page 250

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      In the lawyer (Rubus australis) a considerable differentiation has taken place. All the alllies of this plant (such as the true roses, brambles, rasps, &c.), exhibit a strong development of epidermal structures in the form of hooks, spines, or hairs, but in none are these structures so perfect as in our lawyer.

      1885, New Zealand Journal of Science - Volume 2, page 417

      A plant that is excessively troublesome in the localities where the native vegetation has been least disturbed is the “lawyer” (Rubus australis).

      1915, John Henderson, P. Marshall, Percy Gates Morgan, The Geology and Mineral Resources of the Reefton Subdivision, Westport and North Westland Division, page 6

   2. Various species of Calamus, including Calamus australis, Calamus muelleri, Calamus obstruens, Calamus vitiensis, Calamus warburgii, and Calamus moti.

      The nest was a foot or two from the ground, and placed in a bunch of lawyer (Calamus ) canes.

      1901, Archibald James Campbell, Nests and Eggs of Australian Birds, page 267

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      Besides the bags and nets common throughout the continent, these tribes have water-bags, which they make of closely-plaited “lawyer” (Calamus Australis), and also of palm-leaf sewn with the sinews of animals.

      1886, Edward Micklethwaite Curr, The Australian Race, page 427

      This lawyer (Calamus australis) is a climbing palm, throwing up shoots from its roots as thick as a man's finger and tough as wire, covered with sharp spines, and bearing much divided leaves, alternating with tendrils twenty feel long.

      1905, W. J. Gordon, “Jackey Jackey”, in The Boy's Own Annual, volume 28, page 318

      They were usually very neatly laid out under arching masses of the exasperating lawyer-palm vines ( Calamus moti and C. australis ), and consequently not too easy to examine.

      1910 October, Sidney Wm. Jackson, “Additional Notes on Tooth-billed Bower-Bird (Scenopaeetes dentirostris) of North Queensland”, in The Emu: Official Organ of the Australasian Ornithologists' Union, volume 10, page 84

      Lawyer Vine (Calamus muelleri), also known as Hairy Mary and Wait-a-while, is actually a palm, that grows in long canes that loop and snake through the undergrowth.

      2014, Germaine Greer, White Beech: The Rainforest Years, page 171

      The trail of the lawyer vine (CALAMUS OBSTRUENS), with its leaf sheath and long tentacles bristling with incurved hooks, is over it all.

      2022, E. J. Banfield, The Confessions of a Beachcomber

   3. A woody climbing rainforest vine, Flagellaria indica.

      The stems of the "lawyer vine" (Flagellaria indica), buz or buzi (W.), boz (E.), are used in house-building, tying fences, etc.

      2011, A. C. Haddon, W. H. R. Rivers, Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, page 89

present singular third person lawyers · participle present lawyering · participle past lawyered · past lawyered · alternative obsolete lawer

1. informalintransitiveTo practice law.
2. intransitiveTo perform, or attempt to perform, the work of a lawyer.
3. intransitiveTo make legalistic arguments.
4. informaltransitiveTo barrage (a person) with questions in order to get them to admit something.

   You've been lawyered!

1. A male given name.