Noun

(uncountable)   The act of regulating or the condition of being regulated.

(countable)   A law or administrative rule, issued by an organization, used to guide or prescribe the conduct of members of that organization.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-05-17

, author=George Monbiot, authorlink=George Monbiot , title=Money just makes the rich suffer , volume=188, issue=23, page=19 , magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) citation , passage=In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. […]  The public realm is privatised, the regulations restraining the ultra-wealthy and the companies they control are abandoned, and Edwardian levels of inequality are almost fetishised.}}

* Army regulations state a soldier AWOL over 30 days is a deserter.

(European Union law) A form of legislative act which is self-effecting, and requires no further intervention by the Member States to become law.

(lb) Mechanism controlling DNA transcription.

(lb) Physiological process which consists in maintaining homoeostasis.

Noun

(label) The power to enforce rules or give orders.

* 1883 , (Howard Pyle), (The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood)

But in the meantime Robin Hood and his band lived quietly in Sherwood Forest, without showing their faces abroad, for Robin knew that it would not be wise for him to be seen in the neighborhood of Nottingham, those in authority being very wroth with him.

(label) Persons in command; specifically, government.

*{{quote-book, year=1927, author= F. E. Penny

, chapter=4, title= Pulling the Strings , passage=The case was that of a murder. It had an element of mystery about it, however, which was puzzling the authorities . A turban and loincloth soaked in blood had been found; also a staff.}}

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Legal highs: A new prescription , passage=No sooner has a [synthetic] drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one. These “legal highs” are sold for the few months it takes the authorities to identify and ban them, and then the cycle begins again.}}

(label) A person accepted as a source of reliable information on a subject.

* 1930 September 18, Albert Einstein, as quoted in Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel (1988) by Banesh Hoffman

To punish me for my contempt of authority', Fate has made me an ' authority myself.