Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A person's specific area of interest, skill, or authority. See Synonyms at field.
- n. The office or district of a bailiff.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The county within which a sheriff exercises his office; the precincts in which a bailiff has jurisdiction; the limits of a bailiff's authority, as (in England) a hundred, a liberty, or a forest over which a bailiff is appointed.
Wiktionary
- n. the district within which a bailie or bailiff has jurisdiction.
- n. a person's concern or sphere of operations, their area of skill or authority.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Law) The precincts within which a bailiff has jurisdiction; the limits of a bailiff's authority.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the area over which a bailiff has jurisdiction
- n. a branch of knowledge
Etymologies
- From bailie ("bailiff") and wick ("dwelling"), from Old English wīc. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English bailliwik : baillif, bailiff; see bailiff + wik, town (from Old English wīc, from Latin vīcus; see vicinity). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“As Jim has mentioned, my bailiwick is law firm libraries, as opposed to academic libraries.”
Showdown at Québec City: Canadian law school versus law firm librarians
“What I'm trying to say is, your basic religion doesn't seem to make much of a difference to your belief (or lack of it) in the things that are more in my bailiwick, which is any kind of contact with the dead.”
“And I think I'm probably taking you outside a little bit of your bailiwick, which is intelligence.”
“Also in my bailiwick was the International Court of Justice, the judicial arm of the United Nations, housed in the Carnegie-endowed Peace Palace.”
“The county within which the sheriff exercises his jurisdiction is still called his bailiwick, while the term bailiff is retained as a title by the chief magistrates of various towns and the keepers of royal castles, as the high bailiff of Westminster, the bailiff of Dover Castle, &c.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy"
“An inferior court known as the bailiwick tried ordinary civil suits and breaches of the peace.”
“However, he said decisions about moves into Japan are not within Mr. Jacobs '"bailiwick," indicating the direction of regional development will be led by Las Vegas Sands management, rather than the Macau-based Mr. Jacobs.”
“WILLIS: I could go to a question though that I know is great in your bailiwick which is if I'm unemployed, can I still get a new loan?”
“Rodgers that, not being in our "bailiwick," he could not give me a consular salute from his guns, he ordered the ship's steam launch, and, escorted by the Lieutenant, under our national banner, I soon boarded my ship.”
Shadow and Light An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century
“If she plans to constrain Bill Clinton to the traditional confines of the First Lady – that is, the bailiwick to which she was confined as First Lady, it means Bill Clinton’s sage advice will be about as useful as a taxi driver’s insight on a long trip uptown.”
"I think he would play the role that spouses have always played for presidents."
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bailiwick’.
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Sue's favorite words
panache, flair, pantaloons, periwinkle, pumpernickel, persnickety, cachet, coquette, élan, iris, ambrosia, keen and 99 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Words I Used to Know
Words that make you go "I know that word...what the heck does it mean?!?
pulchritude, sanguine, trenchant, picaresque, gloaming, perfidious, confabulation, epiphany, importune, fulminate, efficacious, maladroit and 111 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2053 more...
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RealLifePixel's Bad-Ass Words
Words so awesome they'll kick your eyeballs' asses!
cucurbitaceous, sacerdotal, loudhailer, bildungsroman, sublation, marmoreal, recusant, velleity, hardscrabble, malinger, miasma, brennschluss and 76 more...
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Spheres
Pneumatosphere, planisphere, empyrean, bailiwick, blastula, orbicle, globose, welkin, almucantar, bathysphere, colure, blastocyst and 46 more...
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Vega's Logophile Dictionary
Words I've heard/read in use, words being learnt, words that I want to eventually use in everyday language, words that are high-brow and elitist and scholarly and obscure, words that display the wo...
parsimonious, torpor, recalcitrant, plebeian, vitriol, gumption, augur, aestival, celerity, diaphanous, farrago, nonpareil and 287 more...
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thekatespanos's list
pomposity, gaggle, scintilla, lemming, bilk, vanquish, conflate, plenary, verisimilitude, perspicacious, rattletrap, obdurate and 325 more...
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Logodaedalus' Lexical Locutionary
Discombobulating the illiterate since the middle of the last century.
adiaphora, agitprop, alliteration, apophthegm, autarky, bête noire, bezoar, biorhythm, braggadocio, canaille, confabulate, confrère and 332 more...
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spicolli's Words
terrapin, ravenous, fuck, sepulchral, garlic, suss, queer, curmudgeon, foodie, intricate, omphalos, subversion and 534 more...
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List Erine
cool mint antiseptic
shalom, cattywampus, bourgeoisie, aerophile, traverse, grotto, epicurean, ex cathedra, nautilus, epitaph, lathe, continuum and 753 more...
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Chained Bear's Favorite Words
peruvian, sparky, poop, etymological, fuck, whatnot, pulchritude, nosh, tetched, quotidian, squalid, trajectory and 388 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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wordhoard
dilatory, ataraxia, hermit, cabana, hut, dome, vestigial, porcine, crapulous, usufruct, curmudgeon, bombastic and 229 more...
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C. S. Bird – Grandiloquent Dictionary
All the words from the Grandiloquent Dictionary.
946 of these 2700 words do not yield any results in six different dictionaries, hence many of them might be misspellings.
More in...abacinate, abcedarian, abderian, ablegate, abligurition, ablutophobia, abnormous, acarophobia, acathasia, accipitrine, accidia, accubitus and 2690 more...
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the omnibus
preponderance, idioglossia, acumen, heteronym, flux, anacoluthon, metonymy, impetus, constellation, exegesis, revelatory, cloistered and 877 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for bailiwick.
Noelle Knight I was glad I had found the bug and proved myself useful otherwise, or I wouldn't last long in Stan's bailiwick. -Charlaine Harris, Living Dead in Dallas Dec 10, 2010
kewpid This word is best pronounced with a British accent. Oct 2, 2007
chained_bear The older definition (from the OED online):
A district or place under the jurisdiction of a bailie or bailiff. Used in Eng. Hist. as a general term including sheriffdom; and applied to foreign towns or districts under a vogt or bailli.
Usages:
c1460 FORTESCUE (1714): "A mean Bayliff may do more in his Bayly-Weke."
1574 tr. Littleton's Tenures 51a, "By the othe of xii true men of hys bayliwike."
1596 SPENSER (1862) "The sheriffe of the shire, whose peculiar office it is to walke up and downe his bayli-wicke."
1678 T. JONES: "Our British Isles, which never were within the diocess or bayliwick of Rome."
1796 MORSE Amer. Geog. II. 305 Berne. "This Canton contains 72 bailiwicks."
And my favorite--with the word used in the sense of "stewardship":
1550 CROWLEY, Epigrams, "Christe shall saie at the laste daye, Geve accounts of your baliwickes." I never thought about Christ using archaic English, and the thought rather tickles. Oct 2, 2007
halcyonwhimsy The current definition is something to the description of one's proper sphere of knowledge or influence. Oct 2, 2007