law: [10] Etymologically, a law is that which has been ‘laid’ down. English borrowed the word from Old Norse *lagu (replacing the native Old English ǣ ‘law’), which was the plural of lag ‘laying, good order’. This came ultimately from the prehistoric Germanic base *lag- ‘put’, from which English gets lay. It has no etymological connection with the semantically similar legal. => lay[law etymology, law origin, 英语词源]