"rules lawyer" meaning in English

See rules lawyer in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-rules lawyer.ogg [Australia] Forms: rules lawyers [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|head=rules lawyer}} rules lawyer (plural rules lawyers)
  1. (slang, derogatory) Someone who attempts to take advantage of a given set of rules, usually by using an overly-literal interpretation that is contrary to their intent, or by selectively choosing which rules take precedence in a given situation. Tags: derogatory, slang
    Sense id: en-rules_lawyer-en-noun-0ZF0UeQ7 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 65 35

Verb

Audio: En-au-rules lawyer.ogg [Australia] Forms: rules lawyers [present, singular, third-person], rules lawyering [participle, present], rules lawyered [participle, past], rules lawyered [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb}} rules lawyer (third-person singular simple present rules lawyers, present participle rules lawyering, simple past and past participle rules lawyered)
  1. (intransitive, slang, derogatory) To behave as a rules lawyer. Tags: derogatory, intransitive, slang Synonyms: rules-lawyer, Often used in roleplaying game with complex rules such as Dungeons & Dragons Related terms: barracks lawyer, sea lawyer
    Sense id: en-rules_lawyer-en-verb-zrJ88tLn

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for rules lawyer meaning in English (3.0kB)

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        "Someone who attempts to take advantage of a given set of rules, usually by using an overly-literal interpretation that is contrary to their intent, or by selectively choosing which rules take precedence in a given situation."
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        "(slang, derogatory) Someone who attempts to take advantage of a given set of rules, usually by using an overly-literal interpretation that is contrary to their intent, or by selectively choosing which rules take precedence in a given situation."
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        "(intransitive, slang, derogatory) To behave as a rules lawyer."
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        "Someone who attempts to take advantage of a given set of rules, usually by using an overly-literal interpretation that is contrary to their intent, or by selectively choosing which rules take precedence in a given situation."
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.