Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Law Possession and use of one's own land.
- n. Manorial land retained for the private use of a feudal lord.
- n. The grounds belonging to a mansion or country house.
- n. An extensive piece of landed property; an estate.
- n. A district; a territory.
- n. A realm; a domain.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Power; dominion; possession. See demain.
- n. A manor-house and the land adjacent or near, which a lord of the manor keeps in his own occupation, for the use of his family, as distinguished from his tenemental lands, distributed among his tenants, originally called bookland or charter-land, and folk-land or estates held in villeinage, from which sprang copyhold estates. Copyhold estates, however, have been accounted demesnes, because the tenants are judged to have their estates only at the will of the lord.
- n. Any estate in land.
Wiktionary
- n. A lord’s chief manor place, with that part of the lands belonging thereto which has not been granted out in tenancy; a house, and the land adjoining, kept for the proprietor’s own use.
- n. alternative form of fro.
- adj. alternative form of fro.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A lord's chief manor place, with that part of the lands belonging thereto which has not been granted out in tenancy; a house, and the land adjoining, kept for the proprietor's own use.
WordNet 3.0
- n. territory over which rule or control is exercised
- n. extensive landed property (especially in the country) retained by the owner for his own use
Etymologies
- Anglo-French, respelling (probably influenced by French mesne, variant of Anglo-Norman meen, middle, in legal phrase mesne lord, lord who holds a manor of a superior lord) of Middle English demeine, from Anglo-Norman, from Old French demaine; see domain.
Examples
“Larry Downing/Reuters Madeline P. Gallard, 13, of Victoria, British Columbia, reacted after mis-spelling her word -- "demesne" -- during competition Wednesday.”
“Wade's house is well situated on a rising ground, and the demesne is a pretty one.”
Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and the Neighbouring Countries
“In the demesne are the ruins of Cappacross, a stronghold of the O'Sullivans.”
The Sunny Side of Ireland How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway
“In this account of the Hawsted harvest the large number of hired men and the few customary tenants is noteworthy as a sign of the times, for before the Black Death the harvest work on the demesne was the special work of the latter.”
“The demesne is a sylvan sanctuary for the wild creatures of the air and the wood, and they congregate here almost as they did at Walton Hall in the days of that most delightful of naturalists and travellers, whose adventurous gallop on the back of a cayman was the delight of all English-reading children forty years ago, or as they do now at Gosford.”
“The happy village was gone -- razed to the very foundations -- the demesne was a solitude -- the songs of the reapers and mowers had vanished, as it were, into the recesses of memory, and the magnificent palace, dull and lonely, lay as if it were situated in some land of the dead, where human voice or footstep had not been heard for years.”
The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain The Works of William Carleton, Volume One
“The lord's land was called his "demesne," or domain.”
“This land held directly by the lord of the manor and cultivated for him was called the "demesne," and frequently included one-half or even a larger proportion of all the land of the vill.”
An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England
“Although it's impressive to see someone accurately use the word legal term "demesne" in a complete sentence, I'm not sure a game that is pure text is the best place for it.”
“Of the old Roman estate only a portion (differing again from parish to parish) remained absolutely under the lords control and was called his "demesne, that is" lords land ", from dominium.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘demesne’.
-
Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
rolig It's a great word, and a lovely poem. Thanks qroqqa and bilby! I believe there is a book by the Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva that was translated into English as The Demesne of the Swans or maybe of the Swan. Can't remember.
Btw, I think Keats got his exploration history wrong. Doesn't "Darien" refer to Panama? If so, the explorer would have been Balboa, not Cortez. Sep 17, 2008
bilby
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne,
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.
—Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
- J. Keats, 'On First Looking into Chapman's "Homer"'. Sep 17, 2008
super-logos And in South Carolina, the Register of Deeds is known as Register Mesne Conveyance. A nice archaic throwback one might expect from one of the 13 original colonies !! **lifting a glass of gin and tonic while enjoying boiled shrimp on the piazza overlooking Charleston Harbor, where, as every good South Carolinian knows, the Atlantic Ocean begins, being formed by the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers.** Aug 26, 2008
qroqqa The best-known use is in Keats, and rhymes with 'serene'. Aug 26, 2008
seanahan I've never figured out how to pronounce this, so I checked the guide and it says di-meen, and that it is essentially the same word as domain. Aug 26, 2008
chained_bear In feudalism, land retained by the lord. Aug 25, 2008