Meanings
plural sumptuary laws
- historicalA 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)1 more example
In past societies based on ascribed status, formal rules and proclamations regulated lifestyle conventions. Sumptuary laws codified which classes could wear which garments. […] With the development of achieved status, we've abandoned sumptuary laws and given Lady Justice a blindfold.
2022, W. David Marx, chapter 2, in Status and Culture, Viking, →ISBN
Translations
Chinese Mandarin 限制消費法 /限制消费法
- 限制消費法 /限制消费法 (xiànzhìxiāofèifǎ)law that attempts to regulate permitted consumption
Finnish säännöstelylaki
- säännöstelylakilaw that attempts to regulate permitted consumption
Latin sumptuariae leges
- sumptuariae legeslaw that attempts to regulate permitted consumption
Swedish överflödsförordning
- överflödsförordninglaw that attempts to regulate permitted consumption
Cite this entry
sumptuary law. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sumptuary%20law
“sumptuary law.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sumptuary%20law. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “sumptuary law,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sumptuary%20law.
Source: sumptuary law on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.