regulatory
Regulatory describes something that holds you to the rules. Detention is regulatory, as are other kinds of punishments. When your mom tells you not to run in the house, she’s being regulatory.
You’ll notice most of the word regulate is in regulatory. That’s because when something is regulatory, it’s regulated. You also might be reminded of the word regular. Things that are regulatory, like being forced to stay in for recess, are intended to keep things regular — no breaking rules, no breaking laws, no breaking at all. Things that are regulatory are meant to keep you from falling out of line.
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restricting according to rules or principles
- MLA
- APA
- Chicago
Vocabulary lists containing regulatory
These are the ten words that stand out as "relevant" to last night's debate according to the Vocabulary.com list builder, which compares how often words appear in a text to how often they appear in the 3.2 billion-word Vocabulary.com corpus. Find our complete vocabulary-focused analysis of the debate here.
The Ninth Republican Debate was held on February 13, 2016 in South Carolina. This debate contained a lot more personal attacks than previous debates have, and there were numerous accusations that one candidate was lying about another one, and much talking over one another. There were some policy discussions too, but the atmosphere of the debate can perhaps best be summed up by the moderator, John Dickerson, who at one point, exasperated by all the sniping and fighting said, like an exhausted parent, "Hold on gentleman, I'm going to turn this car around." Here are 20 vocabulary words from the raucous Ninth Republican Debate.