shrievalty

[prettygoodword]

shrievalty (SHREE-vuhl-tee) - n., the office, term, or jurisdiction of a sheriff.


In England and Wales, anyway, as in Scotland they use sheriffdom instead. The term is not much used in the United States, despite sheriff being an important office -- specifically, the main local law enforcement outside of incorporated cities is the county's sheriff and their deputies (exceptions: Alaska and Connecticut). The word form looks a little odd unless you know that sheriff is a contraction of shire reeve, and then shrieve more easily reads as an alternate contraction, to which -alty was added on the model of mayoralty.


Thanks, WikiMedia!

---L.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

And possibly "fealty" before "mayoralty"--I don't think towns had mayors much before Chaucer (and not only because we have a Reeve's Tale but no Mayor's Tale, heh).

[prettygoodword]

Ah -- hadn't thought to connect that word. Interesting!

[thistleingrey]

I like it because it's changed so many times. Though this section wants people to choose among fee, feoh, foderum, etc., I suspect that the multiplicity of echoes was productive for the first few centuries of "fealty"'s use. I mean, the people writing charters and such were mostly not monolingual, in any part of W Europe....

[thistleingrey]

Wait--what does Connecticut have?

[prettygoodword]

Per Wikipedia, Connecticut doesn't have county governments. However, contra that summary I was relying on, the
detailed section reveals that some Connecticut towns still have sheriffs, acting as process servers.

[thistleingrey]

Interesting! Thanks.
I've learned recently of the existence of minor civil divisions. So many survivals and reinventions, both fossil and living ones.