Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Law Possession and use of one's own land.
- noun Manorial land retained for the private use of a feudal lord.
- noun The grounds belonging to a mansion or country house.
- noun An extensive piece of landed property; an estate.
- noun A district; a territory.
- noun A realm; a domain.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Power; dominion; possession. See
demain . - noun 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.
- noun Any estate in land.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Law) 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.
- noun (Eng. Law) See under
Ancient .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
lord ’s chiefmanor place, with that part of the lands belonging thereto which has not been granted out intenancy ; ahouse , and theland adjoining , kept for theproprietor ’s own use.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun territory over which rule or control is exercised
- noun extensive landed property (especially in the country) retained by the owner for his own use
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word demesne.
Examples
-
Larry Downing/Reuters Madeline P. Gallard, 13, of Victoria, British Columbia, reacted after mis-spelling her word -- "demesne" -- during competition Wednesday.
Spelled Out 2009
-
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 William Griffith
-
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 Robert Lloyd Praeger 1909
-
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.
Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) William Henry Hurlbert 1861
-
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 William Carleton 1831
-
The lord's land was called his "demesne," or domain.
Early European History Hutton Webster
-
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 Edward Potts Cheyney 1904
-
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.
PopMatters 2010
-
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.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8: Infamy-Lapparent 1840-1916 1913
chained_bear commented on the word demesne
In feudalism, land retained by the lord.
August 25, 2008
seanahan commented on the word demesne
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.
August 26, 2008
qroqqa commented on the word demesne
The best-known use is in Keats, and rhymes with 'serene'.
August 26, 2008
super-logos commented on the word demesne
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.**
August 26, 2008
bilby commented on the word demesne
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"'.
September 17, 2008
rolig commented on the word demesne
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.
September 17, 2008
RevBrently commented on the word demesne
From p. 39 of Patrick Leigh Fermor's "A Time to Keep Silence":
I spent much of my limitless leisure walking in the country round the Abbey. The forested hills of the demesne are cut up into long zig-zag rides, tunnels of beech that converge upon moss-covered urns supported by a single Doric pillar.
January 21, 2014