regulation

From regulate +‎ -ion.

regulation (countable and uncountable, plural regulations)

1. (uncountable) The act of regulating or the condition of being regulated.
2. (countable) A law or administrative rule, issued by an organization, used to guide or prescribe the conduct of members of that organization.
   • 2013 May 17, George Monbiot, “Money just makes the rich suffer”, in The Guardian Weekly‎, volume 188, number 23, page 19:

     In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. […]  The public realm is privatised, the regulations restraining the ultra-wealthy and the companies they control are abandoned, and Edwardian levels of inequality are almost fetishised.

   • Army regulations state a soldier AWOL over 30 days is a deserter.
3. (European Union law) A form of legislative act which is self-effecting, and requires no further intervention by the Member States to become law.
4. (genetics) Mechanism controlling DNA transcription.
5. (medicine) Physiological process which consists in maintaining homoeostasis.

regulation (not comparable)

1. In conformity with applicable rules and regulations.
   • 1969, Thomas Wiseman, The Quick and the Dead, page 328:

     It is regulation that these directives are to be destroyed on receipt.

   • 2004, Marc Miller, The Kettles and the Keeps: Ghosts at War, page 88:

     "The hat is regulation as well, I assume."

   • 2007, Jim Butcher, Captain's Fury, page 48:

     It is the responsibility of every legionare to be sure that he is regulation height as well.

• rule
• ruler
• regulate
• regulator
• regulatory
• coregulation
• deregulation
• immunoregulation

• regulation in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• regulation in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

• urogenital