VETO • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Veto

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/vˈitoʊ/ /vˈitˌoʊ/ Listen

noun

Veto n. (pl. vetoes)

An authoritative prohibition or negative; a forbidding; an interdiction. "This contemptuous veto of her husband's on any intimacy with her family."

Specifically:

(a)

A power or right possessed by one department of government to forbid or prohibit the carrying out of projects attempted by another department; especially, in a constitutional government, a power vested in the chief executive to prevent the enactment of measures passed by the legislature. Such a power may be absolute, as in the case of the Tribunes of the People in ancient Rome, or limited, as in the case of the President of the United States. Called also the veto power.

(b)

The exercise of such authority; an act of prohibition or prevention; as, a veto is probable if the bill passes.

(c)

A document or message communicating the reasons of the executive for not officially approving a proposed law; called also veto message. (U. S.) Note: Veto is not a term employed in the Federal Constitution, but seems to be of popular use only.

verb

Veto v. t. (past & past part. vetoed; pres. part. vetoing) To prohibit; to negative; also, to refuse assent to, as a legislative bill, and thus prevent its enactment; as, to veto an appropriation bill.

See images of 'Veto'

Etymology of 'Veto'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Veto" Quotes from Famous Books

... he was to look at things coolly and calculate chances, put his veto on the mad scheme, although he, too, in his revolt, was beginning to meditate the possibilities of ...

— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... Conference, the late Lord Beaconsfield made his well-known declaration, 'I for my part prefer to be on the side of the angels.' But these scenes only indirectly touch Oxford. More intimately connected with her history are the famous Proctorial Veto of 1845, when Dean Church and his colleague saved Tract No. 90 from academic condemnation, and the stormy debates of twenty years ago, when the permission to use Vivisection in the University Physiological Laboratory was only carried after a struggle ...

— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells

... publican (Secretary of the Licensed Victuallers' Protection Association), into which I entered because Fawcett's defeat had been partly owing to the determined opposition of Sir Wilfrid Lawson's friends, who could not forgive his attacks on the direct veto, I succeeded in securing him an invitation to contest Hackney, where there was an early vacancy. Fitzmaurice and I became respectively Chairman and Treasurer of a fund, and we raised more money than was ...

— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... were nothing less than partners—so it seemed to him—in a great game, to be played always in good heart and with the spirit of true sportsmanship. Both moved according to law, the only difference between the two being that Men held the power of the Veto—and exercised it too often, he would add in his perfect, well-bred manner, in a way that declared their ignorance. Men, he averred, would always insist on assuming that their laws were right at all times, and, furthermore, ...

— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry

... in Jackson was in every way equal to Lee's and Lee but once refused to follow Jackson's lead in his veto on his Lieutenant's plan to ...

— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

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