adjective

• Not governed by or obedient to laws; characterized by a lack of civic order.

  ‘a lawless region where peace never really took hold’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Other sources mention Vlad's determination to bring order in lawless times.’
  • ‘What tests or considerations are to guide the jury in determining when he may reasonably become lawless?’
  • ‘He agrees that the United States does indeed act like a sheriff trying to enforce justice in a lawless world.’
  • ‘I'm not surprised that this society is becoming increasingly lawless when magistrates are giving out such small fines.’
  • ‘Was he simply an illicit fantasist running amok in a lawless land, as the prosecution alleged?’
  • ‘Parks has complained that the investigation and prosecutions of lawless cops is moving too slowly.’
  • ‘This just gave them an opportunity to turn more of the city into the lawless chaos they tend to drag with them where ever they go.’
  • ‘It's but a thin red line that separates the lawful from the lawless.’
  • ‘There can be no simple military solution to a threat hidden away in dozens of cities and lawless areas around the world.’
  • ‘When family circumstances allow, I too will exit this crumbling and lawless city.’
  • ‘He was told to go and assert British law over the lawless whalers, sealers, timber merchants, and other settlers.’
  • ‘Jury nullification is not lawless because it is simply is not prohibited by law.’
  • ‘If something similar happened in an inner city school there would be an outcry about lawless youngsters embracing a culture of violence.’
  • ‘They want nothing so much as to be protected from the lawless violence of his undisciplined war bands.’
  • ‘Yet the society has descended from being marginally lawless to one in which the outlaws outnumber the law-abiding.’
  • ‘They are tired of the lawless hell that exists inside the city and are literally willing to have us rubble it to save it.’
  • ‘The modern day rulers of this lawless land, like the nobility of old, prosecute the juiciest targets.’
  • ‘The threat of prosecution is the only way to end their lawless behaviour.’

  Synonyms

  anarchic, anarchical, disorderly, ungovernable, unruly, without law and order, disruptive, insurrectionary, insurgent, revolutionary, rebellious, insubordinate, riotous, mutinous, mutinying, seditious, revolting, terrorist

  illegal, unlawful, lawbreaking, illicit, illegitimate, criminal, felonious, indictable, delinquent, culpable, villainous, transgressing, violating

  View synonyms