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You are here: Home / Language / Where does the word “bailiwick” come from and What does bailiwick mean?

Where does the word “bailiwick” come from and What does bailiwick mean?

May 31, 2020 by Karen Hill

A wick, in olden times, was a village, from the Latin, vicus, village.

It survives now chiefly in place names, often as with, as in Warwick, Greenwich, Norwich. And the bailie, whom we now call bailiff, was the administrative officer. Thus a bailiwick was actually the district over which a bailiff had jurisdiction.

We use the term figuratively now to mean also any place that one regards as one’s own.

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Filed Under: Language

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

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