regulate

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin regulatus, perfect passive participle of regulō (“to direct, rule, regulate”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)), from regula (“rule”), from regō (“to keep straight, direct, govern, rule”). Compare regle, rail. Displaced native Old English metegian.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹɛɡjəleɪt/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: re‧gu‧late

Verb

regulate (third-person singular simple present regulates, present participle regulating, simple past and past participle regulated)

1. To dictate policy.
2. To control or direct according to rule, principle, or law.
   • 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XI, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:

     the laws which regulate the succession of the seasons

   • 1834–1874, George Bancroft, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent, volume (please specify |volume=I to X), Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company [et al.], →OCLC:

     The herdsmen near the frontier adjudicated their own disputes, and regulated their own police.

   • 2023 May 16, Cecilia Kang, “OpenAI’s Sam Altman Urges A.I. Regulation in Senate Hearing”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     But on Tuesday, Sam Altman […] testified before members of a Senate subcommittee and largely agreed with them on the need to regulate the increasingly powerful A.I. technology being created inside his company and others like Google and Microsoft.

3. To adjust (a mechanism) for accurate and proper functioning.

   to regulate a watch, i.e. adjust its rate of running so that it will keep approximately standard time

   to regulate the temperature of a room, the pressure of steam, the speed of a machine, etc.

4. To put or maintain in order.

   to regulate the disordered state of a nation or its finances

   to regulate one's eating habits

Derived terms

• autoregulate
• coregulate
• counterregulate
• crossregulate
• deregulate
• downregulate
• dysregulate
• hyperregulate
• hyporegulate
• immunoregulate
• interregulate
• irregulate
• mechanoregulate
• microregulate
• misregulate
• osmoregulate
• overregulate
• phosphoregulate
• photoregulate
• regulatability
• regulatable
• regulative
• regulon
• reregulate
• reregulation
• retroregulate
• self-regulate
• thermoregulate
• transregulate
• underregulate
• unregulate
• upregulate

Related terms

• rule
• ruler
• regular
• regulation
• regulator

Translations

control — see control

adjust

• Arabic: ضَبَطَ (ar) (ḍabaṭa)
• Armenian: կարգավորել (hy) (kargavorel)
• Bulgarian: регулирам (bg) (reguliram)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 調節 / 调节 (zh) (tiáojié)

• Czech: regulovat
• Dutch: regelen (nl)
• Finnish: säätää (fi)
• French: régler (fr)
• German: regeln (de), regulieren (de)
• Greek:

  Ancient: κανονίζω (kanonízō)

• Hungarian: irányít (hu), szabályoz (hu)
• Italian: regolare (it), registrare (it), tarare (it)
• Japanese: 調節する (ja) (ちょうせつする, chōsetsu suru)
• Korean: 규정하다 (ko) (gyujeong-hada)
• Old English: metegian
• Portuguese: regular (pt)
• Romanian: regula (ro)
• Russian: регули́ровать (ru) impf (regulírovatʹ), отрегули́ровать (ru) pf (otregulírovatʹ)
• Sorbian:

  Lower Sorbian: regulowaś impf, regulěrowaś impf

• Spanish: regular (es)
• Swedish: reglera (sv)
• Turkish: regüle etmek (tr)

control

• Spanish: reglamentar (es)

Further reading

• “regulate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “regulate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

Anagrams

• legature

Latin

Verb

rēgulāte

1. second-person plural present active imperative of rēgulō

Spanish

Verb

regulate

1. second-person singular voseo imperative of regular combined with te