HEY, PISTOLERO

demesne [dih-meyn, -meen]

noun:
1 possession of land as one's own
2 an estate or part of an estate occupied and controlled by, and worked for the exclusive use of, the owner
3 land belonging to and adjoining a manor house; estate
4 the dominion or territory of a sovereign or state; domain
5 a district; region

Examples:

A couple of centuries or so later, the peninsula became part of a Spanish land grant, and the demesne of Manuel Dominguez as his Rancho San Pedro. (Patt Morrison, Palos Verdes Peninsula landslides can tell us a lot about L A history, Los Angeles Times, May 2024)

In Loki, the titular character finds himself in the bizarre (almost Brazil style) demesne of the Time Keepers, an organization devoted to ensuring the sanctity of the timeline. (Erik Kain, Owen Wilson And Tom Hiddleston Light Up First 'Loki' Disney Plus Trailer, Forbes, April 2021)

The castle or manor-house of the baron or lord, into which the thegn’s hall had now developed, was the centre of rural life. Around it lay the home-farm, the lord’s demesne land, cultivated partly by free tenants, partly by the customary labour due from the villeins whose cottages clustered on its border, and whose holdings, with a tract of common pasture and common woodland, made up the remainder of the estate. (Kate Norgate, England Under the Angevin Kings)

However, as he pursued his wayfaring with the two Armenian Christians who formed his retinue, he began to hear from the inhabitants of that portion of Abchaz the rumor of an equally dread demesne, named Antchar, lying before him on the road to Georgia. (Clark Ashton Smith, 'The Kingdom of the Worm')

After winding along it for more than a mile, they reached their own house. A small green court was the whole of its demesne in front; and a neat wicket gate admitted them into it. (Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility)

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Why isn't 'demesne' pronounced the way it's spelled? Our word actually began as demayn or demeyn in the 14th century, when it was borrowed from Anglo-French property law. At that time, the Anglo-French form was demeine. Later, the Anglo-French spelling changed to demesne, perhaps by association with another term from Anglo-French property law: mesne, meaning 'intermediate.' (Mesne has entered English as a legal term as well.) According to rules of French pronunciation, the 's' was silent and the vowel was long. English speakers eventually followed suit, adopting the 'demesne' spelling. Our word domain (which overlaps with the meaning of 'demesne' in some applications) also comes from Anglo-French demeine. (Merriam-Webster)