A minced oath standing in for 'Lord' — a softened exclamation used to express surprise, dismay, or exasperation without technically taking the Lord's name in vain. Common in older American rural speech. It also carries a street slang sense in some US communities where 'the laws' simply means the police — the long arm of the law personified into a single word. Two very different vibes, same spelling.
Laws, I haven't seen you in twenty years — you haven't aged a day!
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
See all Regional & Other slang on Slangora.
Browse all slang words starting with L.
Weirdness in WA, where local councils can apply to the state government for the right to have cat laws, but the state government has knocked back more than 20 such applications www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02...
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(US, slang, street slang, uncommon) The police.
“if they can't figure out how to follow and enforce laws, it's really the only remedy”
“Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch rebuffed President Trump's suggestion that members of the high court owe loyalty to the president who appointed them, saying that his loyalty is to the Constitution and the laws of the United States.”
“Three Inverse Laws of AI https://susam.net/inverse-laws-of-robotics.html”
“Oh, I think the loved following laws, when it supported slavery and then Jim Crow. The white supremacists must be overjoyed at the moment.”
“The D.C. Council will hold its second and final vote Tuesday on the Juvenile Curfew Amendment Act of 2025, deciding whether to make the city’s curfew zone laws permanent.”
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(possibly, dated) A minced oath for Lord.
“I know in parts of Germany there are strict by-laws about when you can do it and certainly where I have been it is restricted to weekday early evenings.”
“Weirdness in WA, where local councils can apply to the state government for the right to have cat laws, but the state government has knocked back more than 20 such applications www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02...”
“#Pakistan 🇵🇰 Between January 2025 and April 2026, Pakistan Press Foundation has documented at least 233 instances of violence against journalists. It called for the active implementation of media safety laws at the federal and Sindh levels.”
“Why is it a liberal? Do you has made decisions on who they want in and out of their territory? The UK has made their own laws about who they wanted for how long? Why are we to tell the EU that they are wrong?”
“Why did anyone want sodomy laws?”
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