Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In law: A dwellinghouse.
- n. A dwelling-house with the adjacent buildings and curtilage, including garden and orchard, appropriated to the use of the household; a manor-house and its appendages.
Wiktionary
- n. A plot of land as the site for a house; later, a residential building taken together with its outbuildings and assigned land.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Law) A dwelling house, with the adjacent buildings and curtilage, and the adjoining lands appropriated to the use of the household.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (law) a dwelling house and its adjacent buildings and the adjacent land used by the household
Etymologies
- From Anglo-Norman mesuage, probably from Late Latin messuagium, probably ultimately from Latin mansio or mansus. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Glendinning is supposed to have inhabited, the head of the Allen, about five miles above its junction with the Tweed, shows three ruins of Border houses, belonging to different proprietors, and each, from the desire of mutual support so natural to troublesome times, situated at the extremity of the property of which it is the principal messuage.”
“Huge triangular piles of planks are also reared in different parts of the devoted messuage; and a little group of trees, that still grace the eastern end, which rises in a gentle ascent, have just received warning to quit, expressed by a daub of white paint, and are to give place to a curious grove of chimneys.”
“The family continued to inhabit this new messuage until about fifty years before the commencement of our history, when it was much damaged by”
“Witness said she had no business to come again, after this Kitty Kelly desired Witness to make some Socks for the Defd., which Wit. accordingly did and carried them to Defd. who gave her Three shillings and Six pence for a pair of the socks and told her, she might get whatever she wanted, for the money in the shop, Defd. also asked Wit. if Kitty Kelly had delivered her any messuage.”
“Continuing along the road as we studied the home, we were led around to the landward front and into the midst of the ancient messuage.”
“In from the life of the old messuage, came a touch of the barbaric; weird minor songs that belonged with the hot throb of the African tom-tom floated in through the deep windows, and strangely mingled with the thin tinkle of the harpsichord and the tender strains of an old English ballad.”
“Perceye's chantry again, which Dugdale considered the oldest (though he does not give the date) was endowed in 1350 with six messuages, one shop, six acres of land and 40s. rent, all lying in Coventry, to which in 1407 William Botoner and others, added a messuage and twenty-four acres of land in the city for another priest.”
The Churches of Coventry A Short History of the City & Its Medieval Remains
“Margaret, his mother, one messuage, a barn and four acres of ground in the parish of Kingston-on-Thames.”
“It is more a messuage than a premises," I explained.”
“Except," said Charles, "that it is usual to offer one's guests the most comfortable arm-chair in the messuage and not to eat all the fattest strawberries oneself, I can't say that I do;" and he fluffed a second mashie pitch with his cigar ash well short of the drawing-room fender.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘messuage’.
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phrontistery - m
from phrontistery.info
mabble, mabsoot, macadamize, macarism, macarize, macaronic, macerate, macerator, machair, machairodont, machicolation, machinule and 898 more...
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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...
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There oughta be a law
there oughta be a..., law, flaw, slaw, cole slaw, lawyer, lawn, Lucy Lawless, lawn ornament, John Law, claw, rollaway and 54 more...
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Joycean Vocab
You ain't read no English til you read Joyce.
rasher, cygnet, usquebaugh, ephebe, entelechy, kish, caul, vicereine, atelier, daguerreotype, communard, connubial and 99 more...
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Quaintnesses
For those who wish no words were ever forgotten
opprobrium, tedium, encomium, odium, ire, enmity, beguile, wile, brazen, popinjay, squit, hoity-toity and 1161 more...
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Castles and Keeps
Shamelessly ripped off from this site and others (to be named hereinafter). (Fair warning: for my own edification, I may add definitions/comments from the site, but you might want to just go there ...
abutment, adulterine, allure, angle-spur, apse, arbalest, arbalestier, arbalist, arcade, arch, armoury, arrow slit and 410 more...
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Learned (or Encountered) in Reading
I have a list for words learned from Newsweek; here's where I keep all the stuff from other shit I read.
Except when I'm looking stuff up and find new words that way. Those go on their...cellie, laminectomy, mridangam, terroir, hypospadias, crus, corpora cavernosa, crura, uretheral meatus, bartholin's gland, coloquintida, colopexy and 921 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
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Clearinghouse
For stuff to simply reside.
calcar, pinion, espadrille, antipodes, peregrine, cormorant, tanager, vireo, farrago, undervest, passerine, oscine and 881 more...
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Words of the Day
glabella, chirotony, nook-shotten, crapehanger, filemot, swirlie, egosurf, lexiphanicism, Ruritanian, stichometry, chrononaut, faldstool and 2263 more...
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Summer 12
accoast, agog, alarums, alembic, anapest, animadvert, anoraked, apostasy, aquarelle, argentated, aubergine, auscultation and 197 more...
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Immrama
Magical Celtic Voyages
literally 'rowings about'The Voyage of Mae..., The Voyage of the..., The Voyage of Sne..., Voyage of St. Bre..., peregrinatio, The Voyage of the..., immrama, Vita Columbae, Vita Albie, Vita Fintani seu ..., peripteral, repechage and 85 more...
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Architecture
awning, bay, bulwark, molding, mullioned, plinth, lintel, pergola, trellis, scaffold, bower, messuage and 17 more...
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M or N?
nurk, nyaffle, nosism, nexum, nazar, noyade, nooningscaup, mimp, mida, mollynogging, mulciberian, marzavec and 68 more...
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The Old Farmstead
quickset, bigg, bullimung, simila, grudgins, misulane, hemp, milk-pan, churn, cheese-press, cheese-shape, butter-mold and 83 more...
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household words
oikonomia, domain, menage, mansion, manor, manse, demesne, menial, arsenal, haft, decumbence, katoikountes and 68 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for messuage.

knitandpurl ""The Queen was not aware of it either," replied Paytim. "Her brother poisoned her and seized control of the Crimson Messuage. He has impertinently invited me to attend his coronoation as Paeolina the Twenty-Ninth.""
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 221 of Errantry: Strange Stories Apr 30, 2013
SSL The fortune-teller's house and garden, or, as Marshall McLuhan once said, "The medium's is the messuage."
Jan 30, 2013
chained_bear see manse Aug 13, 2008