constitution

Law was in the word from the start: Middle English constitucioun meant an edict or ordinance, and a whole body of laws, customs and fundamental principles. That broader sense is the one at work here, where a constitution can be a system that grew over time rather than a single text. Macaulay says his country's "had begun to exist in times when statesmen were not much accustomed to frame exact definitions." The meaning also covers the written charter that sets such a system down. Source

The sense once covered temper as well as body. Clarendon expects passion from a man's constitution, much as we might speak of his nature. It also names general health that can wear down over the years, as when a person's constitution is said to begin to decline.

Here the word looks at what a thing is made of and how its parts fit together, and it usually takes an of-phrase naming that thing: John Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy speaks of "the physical constitution of the sun." Configuration and form are close synonyms, but they lean toward outward shape; constitution covers the parts as well as their arrangement. Applied to a human body, the same idea gives a person's physical makeup.