ukase

• ukaz/Ukaz
• Ukase

Borrowed from Russian ука́з (ukáz, “edict, decree”).

• IPA^(key): /juːˈkeɪz/

ukase (plural ukases)

1. An authoritative proclamation; an edict, especially decreed by a Russian czar or (later) emperor.
   • Henry Brougham, Political Philosophy

     Many estates peopled with crown peasants have been, according to an ukase of Peter the Great, ceded to particular individuals on condition of establishing manufactories […]

   • 1805, The Times, 6 May 1805, page 3, col. C:

     An Ukase, it appears, has been issued by the Emperor Alexander, to facilitate the introduction of calimancoes and other Norwich goods into his Empire.

   • 1988, James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, Oxford 2004, p. 704:

     The planters, he explained in a letter to Lincoln, would accept emancipation by ukase in preference to being compelled to enact it themselves in a new constitution.

2. (figuratively) Any absolutist order and/or arrogant proclamation
   • 1965, John Fowles, The Magus:

     I knew a stunned plunge of disappointment and a bitter anger. What right had he to issue such an arbitrary ukase?

   • 2008, Stephen Burt, "Kick Over the Scenery", London Review of Books, July 2008:

     It is a short step from discovering that the world we know is a fake or a cheat to discovering that human beings are themselves factitious: that we are robots, ‘simulacra’ (the title of one of Dick’s novels), ‘just reflex machines’, ‘repeating doomed patterns, a single pattern, over and over’ in accordance with biological or economic ukases.

• decree
• edict
• ukase on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• ukaz in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

• oukase

Borrowed from Russian ука́з (ukáz, “edict, decree”).

• IPA^(key): /y.kaz/, /u.kaz/

• Audio (Paris)

  (file)

ukase m (plural ukases)

1. (historical) ukase (a decree from a Russian ruler, or any absolute or arrogant order)
2. edict, dictate

• décret m
• édit m
• loi
• ordonnance

• “ukase” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

• ucase

ukase m (invariable)

1. ukase

• ucase

ukase m (plural ukases)

1. ukase (proclamation by a Russian ruler)