Emily Dickinson Lexicon

VE'TO, n. [L. veto, I forbid.]

A forbidding; prohibition; or the right of forbidding; applied to the right of a king or other chief magistrate or officer to withhold his assent to the enactment of a law, or the passing of a decree. Thus the king of Great Britain has a veto upon every act of parliament; he sometimes prevents the passing of a law by his veto.