FIAT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Fiat

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/fˈaɪæt/ Listen

noun

Fiat n.

An authoritative command or order to do something; an effectual decree. "His fiat laid the corner stone."

(Eng. Law)

(a)

A warrant of a judge for certain processes.

(b)

An authority for certain proceedings given by the Lord Chancellor's signature.

Fiat money, irredeemable paper currency, not resting on a specie basis, but deriving its purchasing power from the declaratory fiat of the government issuing it.

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Etymology of 'Fiat'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Fiat" Quotes from Famous Books

... between the Army and the Crown; and Albert had devoted even more time and attention to the details of military business than to the processes of fresco-painting or the planning of sanitary cottages for the deserving poor. But now there was to be a great alteration: Mr. Gladstone's fiat had gone forth, and the Commander-in-Chief was to be removed from his direct dependence upon the Sovereign, and made subordinate to Parliament and the Secretary of State for War. Of all the liberal reforms this ...

— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... was silent from astonishment: was it possible this mild-looking, beardless boy, could be the veritable monster at war with all the world?—excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived of his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded by every member of his family, and denounced by the rival sages of our literature as the founder of a Satanic school? I could not believe it; it must be a hoax. He was habited like a boy, ...

— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... intolerable wrong. Such denial is not only a deprivation of right to the individual, but it is an injury to the State, which is only well governed when controlled by the conflicting opinions, sentiments and interests of the whole, harmonized in the ballot-box, and, by its fiat, elevated to the functions of law. But you have no occasion for expression ...

— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... execute such orders as he might receive from the brigadiers at the head of the several bureaus in Washington. It was not even necessary for those mighty chiefs to say that their mandates had the sanction of any higher authority. Their own fiat was all-sufficient for a mere soldier of the line or for his commanding general, of whatever grade of rank or of command. It is not strange that the Secretary was finally unable to admit that he, great lawyer ...

— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... apparent to any one upon a moment's reflection. Officers, whose only offence may be their belonging to the Volunteer Service, are too frequently subjected to the tender mercy of a Board of Martinets;—men of long service and tried ability, degraded by the fiat of a court composed of officers as tender in intellect as in years, and whose only recommendation to be members of the court, is their recent transfer from lessons in gunnery and drills;—with patent leather knapsacks, to field or higher positions ...

— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

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