1. decree - Noun
2. decree - Verb
An order from one having authority, deciding what is to be done by a subordinate; also, a determination by one having power, deciding what is to be done or to take place; edict, law; authoritative ru// decision.
A decision, order, or sentence, given in a cause by a court of equity or admiralty.
A determination or judgment of an umpire on a case submitted to him.
An edict or law made by a council for regulating any business within their jurisdiction; as, the decrees of ecclesiastical councils.
To determine judicially by authority, or by decree; to constitute by edict; to appoint by decree or law; to determine; to order; to ordain; as, a court decrees a restoration of property.
To ordain by fate.
To make decrees; -- used absolutely.
Source: Webster's dictionaryActual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The laws of God, the laws of man he may keep that will and can; not I: let God and man decree laws for themselves and not for me. A. E. Housman
O Luxury thou curst by Heaven's decree. Oliver Goldsmith
What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree. Abraham Lincoln
Man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing. Baruch Spinoza