Dictionary

sumptuary law en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (historical) A law that attempts to regulate permitted consumption, especially of clothing, food, and luxury expenditures.
   • The Sumptuary Laws have fallen into such a state of desuetude as was never before seen. Our fashionable coat is an amphibium between barn-sack and drayman’s doublet. 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, chapter XIII, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book III (The Modern Worker):
   • In past societies based on ascribed status, formal rules and proclamations regulated lifestyle conventions. Sumptuary laws codified which classes could wear which garments. […] With the development of achieved status, we've abandoned sumptuary laws and given Lady Justice a blindfold. 2022, W. David Marx, chapter 2, in Status and Culture, Viking, →ISBN:

Forms

Translations (4)

la sumptuariae leges (law that attempts to regulate permitted consumption) · fi säännöstelylaki (law that attempts to regulate permitted consumption) · sv överflödsförordning (law that attempts to regulate permitted consumption) · cmn 限制消費法 /限制消费法 (law that attempts to regulate permitted consumption)