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''demesne'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260125204041-00-⌔

demesne - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

demesne (plural demesnes)

  • 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.
    • ✤ And whanne he sawe that he lete charce her oute of this land and bytoke hit me and alle this land in my demenys*
      And when he saw that, he let chase her out of this land, and betook it me, and all this land in my demesnes.*1
    • ✤ The Duke of Argyle led the way in silence to the small postern by which they had been admitted into Richmond Park, so long the favourite residence of Queen Caroline. It was opened by the same half-seen janitor, and they found themselves beyond the precincts of the royal demesne.2
    • ✤ As no one had ever bothered them you could get within a few yards and watch their bright, busy foraging among the leaves. Duffy, the Consul, said that they were there every day as he had resisted the servants’ implorings to shoot them; he knew that as soon as the first shot had been fired, this decorative adjunct to his demesne would vanish for ever.3
    • ✤ I could spot no friendly native to tell me where I might find Bobbie. I proceeded, therefore, to roam hither and thither about the grounds and messuages in the hope of locating her, wishing that I had a couple of bloodhounds to aid me in my task, for the Travers demesne is a spacious one and there was a considerable amount of sunshine above, though none, I need scarcely mention, in my heart.4
    • ✤ Lines 993–995: […] One minute before his death, as we were crossing from his demesne to mine and had begun working up between the junipers and ornamental shrubs, a Red Admirable (see note to line 270) came dizzily whirling around us like a colored flame.5
    • ✤ This area to the west of the city had been a priory demesne in the sixteenth century, but in the frantic landgrab that followed the Restoration of the 1660s, […]6
  • A region or area; a domain.
    • ✤ Oft of one wide expanse had I been told/That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne; […]7

Etymology

From Middle English demayne, from Anglo-Norman demeyne, demene et al., Old French demeine, demaine, demeigne, domaine (“power”) (whence French domaine (“domain”)), a noun use of an adjective, from Latin dominicus (“belonging to a lord or master”), from dominus (“master, proprietor, owner”). See dame. Doublet of domain.

The spelling with non-etymological s is partly due to influence from mesne and partly for the purpose of indicating a long vowel, as the s quiesced before a consonant; compare aisle, isle, Carlisle.

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /dɪˈmeɪn/, /dəˈmeɪn/, /dɪˈmiːn/
  • Hyphenation: de‧mesne
  • Rhymes: -eɪn, -iːn
  • Homophone: domain
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1485, Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur Book XVI, Chapter vii leaf 337r: ↩

  2. 1818 July 25, Jedediah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter I, in Tales of My Landlord, Second Series, […] (The Heart of Mid-Lothian), volume IV, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Company, →OCLC, page 3: ↩

  3. 1952, Norman Lewis, Golden Earth: ↩

  4. 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter III, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC: ↩

  5. 1962, Charles Kinbote [pseudonym; Vladimir Nabokov], “Commentary”, in Pale Fire, New York, N.Y.: Berkley Books, published November 1985, →ISBN, page 195: ↩

  6. 2023, Christopher Morash, Dublin: A Writer’s City, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 237: ↩

  7. 1816 December 1, John Keats, “[Sonnets.] Sonnet XI. On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.”, in Poems, London: […] [Charles Richards] for C[harles] & J[ames] Ollier, […], published 3 March 1817, →OCLC; reprinted in Poems (The Noel Douglas Replicas), London: Noel Douglas, 1927, →OCLC, page 89: ↩

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