lawyer

Etymology

From Middle English lawier, lawyer, lawer, equivalent to law + -yer.

noun

1. A professional person with a graduate law degree that qualifies for legal work (such as Juris Doctor)
2. A professional person qualified (as by a law degree or bar exam) and authorized to practice law as an attorney-at-law, solicitor, advocate, barrister or equivalent, i.e. represent parties in lawsuits or trials and give legal advice.
   A lawyer's time and advice are his stock in trade. - aphorism often credited to Abraham Lincoln, but without attestation
3. (by extension) A legal layman who argues points of law.
4. (UK, colloquial) The burbot.
5. (UK, dialect) The stem of a bramble.
6. Any of various plants that have hooked thorns.
   1. A relative of the raspberry found in Australia and New Zealand, Rubus australis
      The species of Eugnomus are very partial to the lawyer (Rubus australis ) when in bloom. 1881 April, George M. Thomson, “On the Fertilization of New Zealand Flowering Plants”, in Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, volume 13, page 250
      In the lawyer (Rubus australis) a considerable differentiation has taken place. All the alllies of this plant (such as the true roses, brambles, rasps, &c.), exhibit a strong development of epidermal structures in the form of hooks, spines, or hairs, but in none are these structures so perfect as in our lawyer. 1885, New Zealand Journal of Science - Volume 2, page 417
      A plant that is excessively troublesome in the localities where the native vegetation has been least disturbed is the “lawyer” (Rubus australis). 1915, John Henderson, P. Marshall, Percy Gates Morgan, The Geology and Mineral Resources of the Reefton Subdivision, Westport and North Westland Division, page 6
   2. Various species of Calamus, including Calamus australis, Calamus muelleri, Calamus obstruens, Calamus vitiensis, Calamus warburgii, and Calamus moti.
      Besides the bags and nets common throughout the continent, these tribes have water-bags, which they make of closely-plaited “lawyer” (Calamus Australis), and also of palm-leaf sewn with the sinews of animals. 1886, Edward Micklethwaite Curr, The Australian Race, page 427
      The nest was a foot or two from the ground, and placed in a bunch of lawyer (Calamus ) canes. 1901, Archibald James Campbell, Nests and Eggs of Australian Birds, page 267
      This lawyer (Calamus australis) is a climbing palm, throwing up shoots from its roots as thick as a man's finger and tough as wire, covered with sharp spines, and bearing much divided leaves, alternating with tendrils twenty feel long. 1905, W. J. Gordon, “Jackey Jackey”, in The Boy's Own Annual, volume 28, page 318
      They were usually very neatly laid out under arching masses of the exasperating lawyer-palm vines ( Calamus moti and C. australis ), and consequently not too easy to examine. 1910 October, Sidney Wm. Jackson, “Additional Notes on Tooth-billed Bower-Bird (Scenopaeetes dentirostris) of North Queensland”, in The Emu: Official Organ of the Australasian Ornithologists' Union, volume 10, page 84
      Lawyer Vine (Calamus muelleri), also known as Hairy Mary and Wait-a-while, is actually a palm, that grows in long canes that loop and snake through the undergrowth. 2014, Germaine Greer, White Beech: The Rainforest Years, page 171
      The trail of the lawyer vine (CALAMUS OBSTRUENS), with its leaf sheath and long tentacles bristling with incurved hooks, is over it all. 2022, E. J. Banfield, The Confessions of a Beachcomber
   3. A woody climbing rainforest vine, Flagellaria indica.
      The stems of the "lawyer vine" (Flagellaria indica), buz or buzi (W.), boz (E.), are used in house-building, tying fences, etc. 2011, A. C. Haddon, W. H. R. Rivers, Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, page 89

verb

1. (informal, intransitive) To practice law.
2. (intransitive) To perform, or attempt to perform, the work of a lawyer.
3. (intransitive) To make legalistic arguments.
4. (informal, transitive) To barrage (a person) with questions in order to get them to admit something.
   You've been lawyered!