Nomos

Etymology

Greek "nomos" meant law or custom, often set against "physis," nature, in a debate over what is given versus what is agreed. It forms the second half of "autonomy" (self-law), "economy" (household-law), and "astronomy," and its absence gives Durkheim’s "anomie."

noun · /NOH-moss/
Law, custom, or convention — the human-made rules that order a society.
What it names
The order that people impose rather than find, and so marks off the conventional from the natural.
Example
The philosophers argued that morality was nomos, not physis — a code we write, not a fact we discover.
Related idea
The root that decodes anomie literally as "without nomos," and autonomy as "self-nomos" — law given rather than found.