attorney general
- noun
- /əˈtɜrni ˈdʒɛnərəl/
- Formal
- As the chief legal officer, the attorney general represents the government in important court cases.
- deputy attorney general
- assistant attorney general
- attorney general's office
But while Mitchell served as attorney general, Mcgruder was the acting boss.
- But while Mitchell served as attorney general, Mcgruder was the acting boss.
- So the independence of the Attorney General and the Justice Department has been slashed to hell.
- And then he's the attorney general under Trump who covers up the Epstein scandal.
- Right now, Donald Trump is telling his attorney general to shut down the investigation of Donald Trump.
- We got Pam Bondi, powerful attorney general right there.
- And about a year later, Senator Jeff Sessions, who became Trump's attorney general.
- We've already know his father was the the attorney general.
- But at the end of the day, Kamala Harris is the she's the former attorney general for the largest state in the nation.
- The next day we got a subpoena from Eliot Spitzer, who then was the attorney general in New York.
- And the New York attorney General is arguing that we never said Trump was going to get arrested.
- Would I rather have Eric Holder as the attorney general or Jeff Sessions, you know, the person in the top cop person in charge of law enforcement?
- It's happening at school boards, it's happening with attorney general offices across the country, basically saying we're not going to talk honestly about our past.
- As a matter of fact, the forward was written by Ramsey Clark, who was the the, the chief prosecutor, the US attorney general at the time.
- That's the new attorney general, head of the FBI saying that.
Examples
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By filing his complaint Thursday, the attorney general has taken over the action.
Blog text (8) -
-Should we tell the attorney general?
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- Who says so? - The attorney general.
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And it it turns out it was in the media actually that the case was so high profile that the attorney general got involved.
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Right now, Donald Trump is telling his attorney general to shut down the investigation of Donald Trump.
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In 2010, the general election for attorney general in Arizona was a tight one.
Blog text (10) -
The local investigator or the deputy attorney general changed the report.
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Madam Vice President, the attorney general is here.
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Ultimately, the assistant attorney general must make a decision on what course to pursue.
Academic text (1991) -
The president isn't a client of the attorney general.
Surface Forms
Morphology
attorney + general
The parts 'attorney' (lawyer) and 'general' (meaning overall or chief) together plausibly yield 'chief lawyer', so a learner who knows both words can often infer the intended meaning. However, the postpositive adjective order and the formal/title usage — plus the competing sense of 'general' (military/common) — make the relation not fully regular or immediately obvious to all B1 learners.
Etymology
Attorney general: The name attorney general comes from old legal speech where the describing word came after the noun, so general meant 'for everyone' or 'chief'. It pictures an attorney who speaks and acts for the whole country or state, which is why today it means 'the main government lawyer'.