shire

IPA: ʃˈaɪr

(Britain)
(chiefly historical) An administrative area or district between about the 5th to the 11th century, subdivided into hundreds or wapentakes and jointly governed by an ealdorman and a sheriff; also, a present-day area corresponding to such a historical district; a county; especially (England), a county having a name ending in -shire.
(by extension) The people living in a shire (sense 1.1) considered collectively.
(by extension, informal) The general area in which a person comes from or lives.
(by extension) An administrative area or district in other countries.
(Australia, often attributive) An outer suburban or rural local government area which elects its own council.
(obsolete)
A district or province governed by a person; specifically (Christianity), the province of an archbishop, the see of a bishop, etc.
(by extension, generally) A region; also, a country.
A surname.
Short for shire horse (“a draught horse of a tall British breed, usually bay, black, or grey”). [A draught horse of a tall British breed, usually bay, black, or grey.]

(transitive) To constitute or reconstitute (a country or region) into one or more shires (noun sense 1.1) or counties.

Examples of "shire" in Sentences

The shire was the scene of much strife after the Reformation.
The chief law enforcement officer of the shire was the "reeve" or "reef."
Also, county names that end in - shire should sound like - shuh, not - shy-er.
The knight of the shire was the connecting link between the baron and the shopkeeper.
But when Chaucer met her the house was ruling itself somewhere at the 'shire's ende'.
Farewell I fear it is likely to be for some time, as I must reside at my deanery, in ---- shire.
A "shire" was a grouping of hundreds, with a similar gathering of its principal men for judicial, military, and fiscal purposes.
The book is arranged geographically, and in all cases the English word "shire" is omitted, with the result that we come upon such an extremely curious monster as "le Comté de Shrop."
We get the word sheriff from a combination of she English word "shire," representing an administrative area, and "reeve," a person a monarch appointed to carry out judicial, police, works and military functions.
Her noble friend canvassed for her as if it were a county election of the good old days, when the representation of a shire was the certain avenue to a peerage, instead of being, as it is now, the high road to a poor-law commissionership.