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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
law-abiding
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a law-abiding citizen (=never breaking the law)
▪ Most of the people in this town are law-abiding citizens.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
citizen
▪ I am normally a law-abiding citizen but I had not a single scruple.
▪ Those who suffered most, the committee revealed, were the law-abiding citizens.
▪ The majority of people in Oldham are law-abiding citizens.
▪ Eighth Uncle, you know as well as anyone that my brother and I have been honest, law-abiding citizens since childhood.
▪ Once upon a time we were all law-abiding citizens, and now we've got football hooligans.
▪ In future, all movie gays will be law-abiding citizens with healthy relationships, no repressive hang-ups, and a glitter-free wardrobe.
▪ Most law-abiding citizens obeyed it but not so the denizens of the slums, stinking alleys and runnels of Edinburgh.
▪ The five paramilitary officers from the Rathcoole district had each an unblemished record as a law-abiding citizen.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ There is a tendency to look back at a time when people were more peaceful and law-abiding.
▪ These men are all decent, tax-paying, law-abiding people.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Law-abiding

Law-abiding \Law"-a*bid`ing\, a. Abiding the law; waiting for the operation of law for the enforcement of rights; also, abiding by the law; obedient to the law; as, law-abiding people.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
law-abiding

1839, from law + abiding.

Wiktionary
law-abiding

a. Obeying the laws of society; not a lawbreaker; without a criminal record.

WordNet
law-abiding
  1. adj. (of groups) not violent or disorderly; "the right of peaceful assembly" [syn: peaceful]

  2. (of individuals) adhering strictly to laws and rules and customs; "law-abiding citizens"; "observant of the speed limit" [syn: observant]

Usage examples of "law-abiding".

But in the South, where Negro labor is plenty and agriculture is the chief occupation, the Negro will always have a practical monopoly, and his opportunities in all the trades in the North, as well as in the South, will increase in proportion as he becomes an educated, thrifty, law-abiding land-owner.

Catholic majesty save me from the hands of the infamous alcalde who has arrested me, an honest and a law-abiding man, who came to Spain trusting in his own innocence and the protection of the laws.

The honest, law-abiding Negro who has a home, is getting a little property, has a small bank account, and is educating his children to useful citizenship, attracts little or no attention.

I made a lively representation to him of all the grounds on which my landlady required proportionate amends to be made, since the laws guaranteed the peace of all law-abiding people.

In all truth, these talented, hardworking, law-abiding, mature, adult people are far more disturbing to the peace and order of the current status quo than any scofflaw group of romantic teenage punk kids.

Therefore I must warn you, in the most friendly spirit: if you succeed in making your escape from the Sybarite with the jewels, as you quite possibly may, it will be my duty as a law-abiding man to inform the police that Andre Duchemin is at large with his loot from the Chateau de Montalais.

The law-abiding Briton is so imbued with the idea of the sanctity of human life that it was hard for the young pressman to realise that these men had every intention of killing him, and that he was at perfect liberty to do as much for them.

Deathlands in packs, like mangy wolves, slinking into law-abiding villes and stealing food and supplies.

And though the beauty of Elsie Bennett thrilled him, he had looked forward to a wedding with her rather as a proof of his own daring and a glove thrown in the face of the law-abiding world, than because his happiness would be unassured until she was his.

I, a law-abiding citizen, a humble bookseller, should now be descending the steps of a brothel in the middle of Alsatia, at nightfall, in disguise.

He was the very model of the perfect Camorrista, benign and law-abiding on the surface, brutal and treacherous below it.

Then there were the Hoovers - the ivory-white Hoovers flushed with all the benefits of a doting society, the people of intelligence and position who slid through life plucking up the breaks as they dropped in their laps - who had nothing better to do with their lives than indulge their fantasies with harebrained schemes and crackpot notions and then feel they had the legal right to inflict their sick delusions on decent, law-abiding people.

Despite attempts at self-policing, the nets have long been a lawless place, a haven for a criminal minority as well as for the law-abiding majority.

Winnipeg and Montreal, which has kept Port Ticonderoga a law-abiding town and clear of the scenes of Union riots, brutal violence and Communist-inspired bloodshed which have marred other cities with considerable destruction of property and injury as well as loss of life.

I made a lively representation to him of all the grounds on which my landlady required proportionate amends to be made, since the laws guaranteed the peace of all law-abiding people.