lawing

See also: Lawing

English edit

law +‎ -ing

lawing (plural lawings)

Going to law; litigation.
- 1577, Raphaell Holinshed, The Firste Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande […], volume I, London: […] [Henry Bynneman] for Iohn Harrison, →OCLC:
  And in this distresse and necessitie it had beene verie requisit and needfull that the souldiers should haue taken vp their weapons , serued against the enimie , and haue defended Lawing woorse the common state
(UK, Scotland, obsolete) Money owed for a service rendered.
- 1824, Sir Walter Scott, St. Ronan's Well, page 9:
  A shilling for breakfast, three shillings for dinner, including a pint of old port, eighteen-pence for a snug supper — such were the charges of the inn of Saint Ronan's under this landlady of the olden world, even after the nineteenth century had commenced ; and they were ever tendered with the pious recollection, that her good father never charged half so much, but these weary times rendered it impossible for her to make the lawing less.
- 1925, George Wharton Edwards, The Book of Old English Ballads, →ISBN:
  Late at e'en, drinking the wine, And ere they paid the lawing, They set a combat them between, To fight it in the dawing.
- 2012, Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, →ISBN, page 1024:
  A Spanish legend has it, that there was a cave at Salamanca, where he constantly maintained seven scholars, on condition that when they had finished their studies, the seventh should pay the lawing.