vicinage

English

Etymology

From Old French visnage, respelled to more closer match its Latin source vīcīnus (“neighbor”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈvɪsɪnɪdʒ/

Noun

vicinage (plural vicinages)

1. (now rare) A surrounding district; a neighbourhood.
   • 1748, [Samuel Richardson], “Letter XXXIV”, in Clarissa. Or, The History of a Young Lady: […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to VII), London: […] S[amuel] Richardson;  […], →OCLC:

     She is the only flower of fragrance that has blown in this vicinage for ten years past, or will for ten years to come […].

   • 1843, Bernard M— (of S—), A Dream of a Queen's Reign, page 4:

     but scarce had I drawn back mine arms, strained the outward flexure of my knee-joints, and was fixed in an apt disposure to take the corvetto primo and leap-valiant of the cour, when methought suddenly there came in and did appear before me mine ancient, most reverend and singular good friend, the rector of Saynt Andrew of S—, nearest in neighbourhood, but not of mine own cure, myself being of D— manor house in the same vicinage,—who astonished beyond measure at my so extasied gladness, demanded wherefore I did carry myself on this wise?

   • 1848, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: an Autobiography‎^[1], London: Smith, Elder, and Co. Cornhill, page 263:

     It was as still as a church on a week-day: the pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound audible in its vicinage.

2. (now rare) The people of a neighbourhood.
3. The state of living near something; proximity, closeness.
   • 1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country‎^[2], New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, page 7:

     In the few years that she had lived here, a stranger herself, in some sort—not accustomed, as was her husband, to a lifelong vicinage to the pygmy burial-ground—she had developed no receptivity to that uncanny idea of a race of dwarfs.

4. (British, US, law) The area where a crime was committed, a trial is being held, or the community from which jurors are drawn.
5. (New Jersey, law) A geographical division of the w:New Jersey Superior Court, covering one or more counties, for judicial administration and the assignment of venue to an action within the Superior Court

See also

• vicinity
• vicinal