mesne

[prettygoodword]

mesne - adj., (Law) intermediary or intervening.


Long first e, silent s and last e: pronounced like "mean." Note also demesne. From Norman French, from the same Latin root medianus that gives us median and mean-as-in-middle. In feudal law, a mesne lord is someone who holds land from one lord and grants some of it to another person, and so is tenant to one and lord of the other. There are some other legal uses, but this one strikes me as extensible to someone who sublets an apartment being a mesne landlord.

And that ends this week of Words My True Love Gave Me; back next week to the regular random mix.

---L.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I saw "mesne" and immediately thought "demesne" :-)

Funny that mesne lord is pronounced "mean lord"!

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

There's a relation: the demesne is the home manor that doesn't get tennanted out.

---L.

[loup_noir]

I saw this and immediately thought:

Mesnie: Loosely defined as a medieval household with a feudal lord. More narrowly, a group of knights (typically errants) who travel closely and fight in tourney and war with a feudal lord, who is usually of high noble bearing. Fealty does not seem to be the only root of these groups, although it would be hard to imagine the mesnie without those bonds given the time period and the society they lived in. Mesnie seem to have been borne from a sense of camaraderie and singular purpose in addition to a purely feudal relationship. (from http://www.chronique.com/Library/Glossaries/glossary-KCT/gloss_m.htm)

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

Huh. Interesting!

---L.