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Etymology
Origin of enactment
Explanation
The process of making something into a law is enactment. The enactment of new legislation in your town means that you'll now have to keep your dog on a leash in all public parks. Enactment comes from the verb enact, which has long been used to mean "establish as law." This legal terminology has "act" at its center, meaning both "to do" and "written proof of something that's been said, done, or agreed to." Legitimizing this kind of act as law is where enactment comes in. You can also use this word for the resulting law itself: "The enactment doesn't affect me — I never let my dog off her leash anyway."
Vocabulary lists containing enactment
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Since the law’s enactment, Congress has provided funding for the national program.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2026
The bill’s imminent enactment comes as housing affordability is front and center for many Americans.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 10, 2026
Yet the most exacting enactment of Rosenzweig’s theology was private, where truth flickers in the risky traffic between souls.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 6, 2026
The bond market appears unworried about the next decade, even as tariff’s enactment and now reversal heightens global trade uncertainty.
From Barron's ● Feb. 24, 2026
With this enactment Millet hoped to carry visitors “back 400 years”—despite the steam tugboats that would nudge the Spanish ships toward shore.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
In general, that anxiety shows up in the defenses against it through a wide variety of hypermasculine poses, declarations and enactments.
From Salon ● Oct. 17, 2024
Such stories and dramatic enactments can bring shared attention to these kinds of challenges, and we know that shared attention is one mechanism that can help people cooperate and solve coordination dilemmas.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 20, 2023
“The Judicial Branch derives its legitimacy, not from following public opinion, but from deciding by its best lights whether legislative enactments of the popular branches of Government comport with the Constitution.”
From Washington Post ● Jul. 2, 2022
It noted “we are not aware of any other pending litigation in which a reorganized entity claims immunity from post-discharge statutory enactments that impose retrospective liability.”
From Slate ● Dec. 16, 2019
Then with lightning-speed, in dazzling sequence, a host of contradictory enactments, such as should keep the ball a-rolling.
From My Lords of Strogue, Vol. I (of III) A Chronicle of Ireland, from the Convention to the Union by Lewis Wingfield
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
