Word of the Day

: June 20, 2007

purview

noun PER-vyoo

What It Means

1 a : the body or enacting part of a statute

b : the limit, purpose, or scope of a statute

2 : the range or limit of authority, competence, responsibility, concern, or intention

3 : range of vision, understanding, or cognizance

purview in Context

The court ruled that the student's T-shirt fell under the purview of the First Amendment.

Did You Know?

You might guess that there is a connection between "purview" and "view." "Purview" comes from "purveu," a word often found in the legal statutes of 13th- and 14th-century England. These statutes, written in the Anglo-French, opened with the phrases "purveu est" and "purveu que," which translate literally to "it is provided" and "provided that." "Purveu" derives from "porveu," the past participle of the Old French verb "porveeir," meaning "to provide." "View" derives (via Middle English) from the past participle of another Anglo-French word, "veer," meaning "to see," and ultimately from the Latin "vidēre," an ancestor of "porveeir" meaning "to see."

*Indicates the sense illustrated by the example sentence.