Shiraz (sheraz)

[Pers. Shiraz.] A wine produced in the neighborhood of Shiraz in Persia. There are a red variety and a white variety, and one about the color of sherry, sweet and luscious. shirel (sher or shir; in the United Kingdom now usually shir, except in composition), n. [Early mod. E. also shyre, shiere; An exact diuision thereof [Palestine] into twelve shires or shares. Purchas , Pilgrimage, p. 103. shire In the earlier use of the word, shire had simply answered to division. The town of York was parted into seven such shires . J. R. Green, Conquest of England, p. 230. 2. Originally, a division of the kingdom of England under the jurisdiction of an ealdorman, whose authority was intrusted to the sheriff ('shire-reeve'), on whom the government ultimately devolved; also, in Anglo-Saxon use, in general, a district, province, diocese, or parish; in later and present use, one of the larger divisions into which Great Britain is parted out for political and administrative purposes; a county. Some smaller districts in the north of England retain the provincial appellation of shire, as Richmond shire, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, and Haliamshire, or the manor of Hallam, in the West Riding, which is nearly coextensive with the parish of Sheffield. See knight of the shire, under knight. Of maystres hadde he moo than thries ten, That were of lawe expert and curious; An able for to helpen al a schire In any caas that mighte falle or happe. Chaucer , Gen. Prol. to C. T. (ed. Morris), 1. 584. The foole expects th' ensuing year To be elect high sherif of all the sheire. Times ' Whistle (E. E. T. S.), p. 46. The name scir [AS. scire ] or shire , which marks the division immediately superior to the hundred, merely means a subdivision or share of a larger whole, and was early used in connexion with an official name to designate the territorial sphere appointed to the particular magistracy denoted by that name. So the diocese was the bishop's scire, and the stewardship of the unjust steward is called in the Anglo-Saxon translation of the Gospel his græfscire. We have seen that the original territorial hundreds may have been smaller shires. The historical shires or counties owe their origin to different causes. Stubbs, Const. Hist., § 48. 3t. A shire-moot. See the quotation under shire-day. The shires, a belt of English counties running in a northeast direction from Devons hire and Hampshire, the names of which terminate in shire. The phrase is also applied in a general way to the midland counties: as, he comes from the shires; he has a seat in the shires. shire2t, a. and v. An obsolete form of sheer1. shire-clerk (shir'klėrk), n. In England, an officer appointed by the sheriff to a ist in keeping the county court; an under-sheriff; also, a clerk in the old county court who was deputy shire-day (shēr'dā), n. A day on which the shire-moot, or sheriff's court, was held. to the under-sheriff. Walter Aslak,... on the shyre - day of Norffolk, halden at Norwiche, the xxviij. day of August, in the seyd secunde yeer, beyng there thanne a grete con greg a cion poeple by cause of the seyd shyre, swiche and so many manaces of deth and dismembryng maden. Paston Letters, I. 13. shireevet, n. An obsolete form of sheriff1. shire-gemot (sher'ge-mōt"), n. [AS. sciregemōt, scirgemōt: see shire - moot.] Same as shire - moot. IMG:content-0891.png:[blocks in formation] shire-moot (shēr'möt), n. [Also shiremote ; . An earlier form of sheriff1 . AS. sciregemōt , scirgemōt , also scyresmōt (> ML. scyre - motus ), shire-moot, scire , shire, + gemōt , meeting: see shirel and moot1 . Cf. folk- moot , witena - gemot .] Formerly, in England, a court or a embly of the county held period i- cally by the sheriff along with the bishop of the diocese, and with the ealdorman in shires that had ealdormen. The presence of the ealdorman and the bishop, who legally sat with him [the sheriff] in the shire - moot, and whose presence recalled the folk-moot from which it sprang, would nece arily be rare and irregular, while the reeve was bound to attend; and the result of this is seen in the way in which the shire - moot soon became known simply as the sheriff's court. J. R. Green, Conquest of England, p. 230. The shiremoot , like the hundred moot, was competent to declare folk right in every suit, but its relation to the lower court was not, properly speaking, an appellate jurisdiction. Its function was to secure to the suitor the right which he had failed to obtain in the hundred.