messuage

English
WOTD – 5 August 2022

Etymology

From Late Middle English mesuage, messuage (“dwelling house, residence; farmstead; household”),[1] from Anglo-Norman mesuage, messuage (“residence; holding”), probably from Late Latin mesuagium, messuagium, probably ultimately from Latin mānsiō (“abode, dwelling, habitation, home”) or its etymon mānsus (“having remained or stayed”),[2] the perfect passive participle of maneō (“to abide; to remain, stay”), from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to remain, stay”).

cognates

Pronunciation

Noun

messuage (plural messuages)

  1. (chiefly law) Originally, a plot of land as the site for a dwelling house and its appurtenant interests; now, a dwelling house or residential building together with its outbuildings and assigned land.
    Synonym: (obsolete) mease
    • 1819 July 15, [Lord Byron], Don Juan, London: […] Thomas Davison, […], →OCLC, canto I, stanza XXXVII, page 21:
      Dying intestate, Juan was sole heir / To a chancery suit, and messuages, and lands, / Which, with a long minority and care, / Promised to turn out well in proper hands: […]
    • 1840 June 8, C[harles] Poulett Thomson, “An Ordinance to Incorporate the Ecclesiastics of the Seminary of Saint Sulpice of Montreal; […] [No. 164 of 1840]”, in Copy of Ordinances Passed by the Governor and Special Council of Lower Canada, in the Third and Fourth Years of the Reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (Accounts and Papers, Parliament of the United Kingdom, House of Commons; 1841, session 1), volume XV, published 3 February 1841, →OCLC, pages 151–152:
      And be it further ordained and enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That the Right and Title of the said Ecclesiastics of the Seminary of Saint Sulpice of Montreal, in and to all and singular the said Fiefs and Seigniories of the Island of Montreal, of the Lake of the Two Mountains, and of Saint Sulpice, and their several Dependencies, and in and to all Seigniorial and Feudal Rights, Privileges, Dues, and Duties arising out of and from the same, and in and to all and every the Domains, Lands, Reservations, Buildings, Messuages, Tenements, and Hereditaments within the said several Fiefs and Seigniories now held and possessed by them as Proprietors thereof, […] shall be and they are hereby confirmed and declared good, valid, and effectual in the Law; […]
    • 1842, Alfred Tennyson, “[English Idyls and Other Poems. (Published 1842.)] Edwin Morris; or, The Lake”, in Poems, 8th edition, London: Edward Moxon, […], published 1853, →OCLC, page 235:
      She went—and in one month / They wedded her to sixty thousand pounds, / To lands in Kent and messuages in York, / And slight Sir Robert with his watery smile / And educated whisker.
    • 1985 September 1, Anthony Burgess, chapter 1, in The Kingdom of the Wicked, London: Allison & Busby, published 2009, →ISBN, page 74:
      Matthias turned his lonely house into a mart where furniture, plate and titledeeds to fields and messuages could be brought, evaluated, and transferred to the hands of the primal twelve as administrators.

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See also

References
  1. “mesuāǧe, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  2. “messuage, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2022; “messuage, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
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