• lawer (obsolete)

From Middle English lawiere, lawier, lawer, equivalent to law +‎ -yer.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈlɔːjə(ɹ)/, /ˈlɔɪ.ə(ɹ)/^[1]
• (US, Northern and Western) IPA^(key): /ˈlɔɪ.ɚ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• (US, Southern) IPA^(key): /ˈlɔ.jɚ/
• (Dublin) IPA^(key): /ˈlɔɪ.əɹ/, /ˈlɔɪ.ɐ/
• (Indic) IPA^(key): /ˈlɔjə(ɾ)/, (father-bother merger) /ˈlɑjə(ɾ)/
• Hyphenation: law‧yer
• Rhymes: -ɔɪ.ə(ɹ), -ɔː.jə(ɹ)
• Rhymes: -ɔɪə(ɹ)

lawyer (plural lawyers)

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.

   Synonyms: advocate, attorney, counselor; see also Thesaurus:lawyer

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

     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;[…].

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

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

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

3. (by extension) A legal layman who argues points of law.
4. (UK, colloquial) The burbot.
5. (UK, dialect) The 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
      • 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:

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

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

        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.

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

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

   2. Various species of Calamus, including Calamus australis, Calamus muelleri, Calamus obstruens, Calamus vitiensis, Calamus warburgii, and Calamus moti.
      • 1886, Edward Micklethwaite Curr, The Australian Race, page 427:

        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.

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

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

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

        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.

      • 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:

        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.

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

        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.

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

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

   3. A woody climbing rainforest vine, Flagellaria indica.
      • 2011, A. C. Haddon, W. H. R. Rivers, Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, page 89:

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

• Tok Pisin: loya
• → Malay: loyar
• → Māori: rōia
• → Middle Scots: lawer
  • Scots: lawer
• → Unami: (from the plural) lòyès
• → Yiddish: לויער (loyer)
• → Yoruba: lọ́yà

lawyer (third-person singular simple present lawyers, present participle lawyering, simple past and past participle lawyered)

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

   You've been lawyered!

• Rawley, warely, yawler

lawyer

1. alternative form of lawiere