Constitution definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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Definitions (28)

American Heritage Dictionary (6)

noun The act or process of composing, setting up, or establishing.
noun The composition or structure of something; makeup.
noun The physical makeup of a person: Having a strong constitution, she had no trouble climbing the mountain.

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Century Dictionary (16)

The act of constituting, establishing, or appointing; formation.
The state of being constituted, composed, made up, or established; the assemblage and union of the essential elements and characteristic parts of a system or body, especially of the human organism; the composition, make-up, or natural condition of anything: as, the physical constitution of the sun; the constitution of a sanitary system; a weak or irritable constitution. He defended himself with … less passion than was expected from his constitution. Lord Clarendon. The Chaos, and the Creation; Heaven, Earth, and Hell; enter into the Constitution of his Poem. Addison, Spectator, No. 315. What is that constitution or law of our nature without which government would not exist. and with which its existence is necessary? Calhoun, Works, I. 1. A good constitution; such a constitution received at birth as will not easily admit disease, or will easily overcome it by its own native soundness. Maine, Early Law and Custom, p. 228.
A system of fundamental principles, maxims, laws, or rules embodied in written documents or established by prescriptive usage, for the government of a nation, state, society, corporation, or association: as, the Constitution of the United States; the British Constitution; the Constitution of the State of New York; the constitution of a social club, etc. In American legal usage a constitution is the organic law of a State or of the nation, the adoption of which by the people constitutes the political organization, as distinguished from the statutes made by the political organization acting under the order of things thus constituted. Without a constitution—something to counteract the strong tendency of government to disorder and abuse, and to give stability to political institutions—there can be little progress or permanent improvement. Calhoun, Works, I. 11. A federal constitution is of the nature of a treaty. It is an agreement by which certain political communities, in themselves independent and sovereign, agree to surrender certain of the attributes of independence and sovereignty to a central authority, while others of these attributes they keep in their own hands. E. A. Freeman, Amer. Lects., p. 190.

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My hometown of Rhinelander Wisconsin (way up north!) has been in a police state for years and I attribute it to the Lawyers here … Go figure, the constitution is a deterrent to them making the big money they all covet. — Alex Jones' Prison Planet.com
In October 1990, the constitution was amended to curtail the term of President Jaruzelski.
He said after killing Father of the Nation Bangabandhu, the constitution was amended giving priority to religion, which helped emerge religious fundamentalism in the country. — The New Nation
To this day we still do what they tell us to do even though the constitution was actually written to prevent that very thing from happening. — Alex Jones' Prison Planet.com
By definition a constitution is a consensus document, and not a contested piece of paper produced by three political parties.

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institution · law · tradition · liberty · religion · discipline · regulation · administration · conception · legislation · structure · education

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (1)

Century Dictionary (1)

from Middle English constitucion, from Old French constitucion, -tion, French constitution = Spanish constitution = Portuguese constituição = Italian constituzione, costituzione = Dutch konstitutie = German constitution = Danish Swedish konstitution. from L, constitutio(n-), a constitution, disposition, nature, a regulation, order, arrangement, from constituere, past participle constititutus, establish: see constitute.

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