Laws refers to the body of binding rules and regulations, customs and standards established in a community by its legislative and judicial authorities. It commonly describes a binding regulation or custom established in a community in this way, the control and order brought about by the observance of such rules, and a person or group that act(s) with authority to uphold such rules and order (for example, one or more police officers), which gives the term a broader and more practical sense than a single short definition would suggest. Depending on context, it can also point to the profession that deals with such rules (as lawyers, judges, police officers, etc), jurisprudence, the field of knowledge which encompasses these rules, and litigation, legal action (as a means of maintaining or restoring order, redressing wrongs, etc), so the category can cover literal uses, related ideas, and more figurative extensions of the same core meaning. Taken together, these meanings present Laws as a flexible theme rather than a narrowly technical label, covering the central idea people usually mean when they use the word while still leaving room for closely related senses that appear in real language. Additional shades of meaning include an allowance of distance or time (a head start) given to a weaker (human or animal) competitor in a race, to make the race more fair, one of two metaphysical forces ruling the world in some fantasy settings, also called order, and opposed to chaos, an oath sworn before a court, especially disclaiming a debt. (Chiefly in the phrases "wager of law", "wage one's law", "perform one's law", "lose one's law".), a tumulus of stones, and a hill, which reinforce how the category can stretch across adjacent but still recognizable uses of the same term.
