Veto definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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American Heritage Dictionary (6)

noun The vested power or constitutional right of one branch or department of government to refuse approval of measures proposed by another department, especially the power of a chief executive to reject a bill passed by the legislature and thus prevent or delay its enactment into law.
noun Exercise of this right.
noun An official document or message from a chief executive stating the reasons for rejection of a bill.

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Century Dictionary (8)

In a constitutional government, the right vested in one branch of it to negative the determinations of another branch; specifically, the right, under constitutional restrictions, of the executive, as a king, a president, or a governor, to reject a bill passed, by the legislature; also, the act of exercising this right. This power is often traced to the privilege enjoyed by the Roman tribunes of annulling or suspending any measures of the senate, decree of a magistrate, etc., the word veto (I forbid) having been at least occasionally used by the tribune in such a case. This power of the tribunes was properly called intercessio. The attempt on the part of Louis XVI. of France to exercise the veto assured to him by the Constitution of 1791 was one of the causes of the revolutionary movements of 1792, which at once dethroned the king and overturned the Constitution. In Great Britain the power of the crown is confined to a veto, a right of rejecting and not resolving, and even this right has become practically obsolete, the last occasion of its exercise being in the reign of William III. The Constitution of the United States provides that “every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States. If he approve, he shall sign it; but if not, he shall return it with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two-thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two-thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. … If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournmeut prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.” (Article I. Sec. 7.) Most of the State Constitutions have a similar provision. A man who might be afraid to defeat a law by his single veto might not scruple to return it for re-consideration. A. Hamilton, Federalist, No. 73. Afterwards the veto message of President Jackson put an end to legislation upon local routes. T. H. Benton, Thirty Years, I. 26. Veto. By this expression (Lat. veto, ‘I forbid’) is understood in public law the constitutional right of the competent authority, or in republics of the whole people in their primary assembly, to protest against a legislative or administrative act, and to prevent wholly, or for the time being, the validation or execution of the same. Encyc. Brit., XXIV. 206.
Any right or power of authoritatively forbidding or effectively negativing, or the exercise of such right or power; prohibition; interdict. On George's intercourse with Amelia he put an instant veto. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, xviii. The rector had beforehand put a veto on any Dissenting chairman. George Eliot, Felix Holt, xxiv.
Absolute veto a veto without restrictions.

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The doctors know that their veto is anyhow useless and would only anger me. — THE BANTAM WAR BOOK SERIES
This veto was a derisory right which the Assembly allowed the king to exercise when he would not acquiesce in their propositions. — Ruin of a Princess
Cecil Pearce, Southeast region vice president for the American Insurance Association, expressed his insurers 'disappoinment, calling the veto an "opportunity lost for Florida - an opportunity to provide a modest, market-based alternative to Florida's over-regulated property insurance market that has been in short supply in recent years."
In his veto, the Governor complained that lawmakers were using too many of the state's reserves to balance their budget. — OPB News
Palestinians have learn through their history that American financial support and the American veto were always there to defend the state of Israel, while Europe which regards itself as somehow different to the United States has practiced a policy of hypocrisy and double standards by equalizing between the victim and the occupier, despite its historical responsibility for creating the Palestinian tragedy. — Countercurrents.org

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