Sheriff

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Dr. Goodword
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Sheriff

Postby Dr. Goodword » Sun Nov 30, 2014 10:10 pm

• sheriff •


Pronunciation: she-rif • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. (US) The chief law-enforcement officer in a county or parish, popularly elected, except in Rhode Island. 2. (England & Wales) The chief executive officer of the Crown in a county, having mainly ceremonial duties (adjective: shrieval). 3. (Scotland) A judge in any of the sheriff courts. 4. (Australia) An administrative officer of the Supreme Court, who enforces judgments and the execution of writs, empanels juries, etc.

Notes: In the US, counties have their sheriffs; cities, their chiefs of police. Sheriffs have their deputies; cities their police officers. Sheriff comes with a covey of derived relatives: sheriffhood or sheriffship refers to the office or position of a sheriff, sherrifwick, the jurisdiction of a sheriff, and sheriffdom has both these meanings.

In Play: There isn't much room for metaphoric ambling with this word, so we will keep to the original sense of the word: "When the sheriff was called out to the Eta Beta Pi fraternity last night because of the noise, party-goers peeled the emblem from the door of his car." Again: "The sheriff's department has taken appropriate disciplinary action to see that the officer who punched the mayor on the nose will show more restraint in the future."

Word History: In Middle English sheriff referred to the representative of royal authority in a shire, based on Old English scirgerefa, a compound made up of scir "shire" + gerefa "reeve, official". Now, scir came to English via Old Germanic from Proto-Indo-European sker "(a) cut, a share", which split up into many different words after arriving in English. It provided English with its words share, shear, and score, in the sense of a notch originally used to keep score. It can also be seen in short, originally meaning "cut off", skirt and shirt, all from Old Germanic skurtaz. (Today's Good Word was recommended by Mary Ann Talbot, to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude.)
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William Hupy
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Re: Sheriff

Postby William Hupy » Mon Dec 01, 2014 11:06 am

And in Wisconsin, at least, Towns have their constables and Villages their marshals.
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LukeJavan8
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Re: Sheriff

Postby LukeJavan8 » Mon Dec 01, 2014 1:17 pm

And I am presuming in Rhode Island they are appointed by
someone, and serve a county or some other division of political
entity.
-----please, draw me a sheep-----

Perry Lassiter
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Re: Sheriff

Postby Perry Lassiter » Mon Dec 01, 2014 5:58 pm

Then there's the current slang usage. Someone tries to correct my language, and I retort, "Who made you the language sheriff?"
pl

LukeJavan8
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Re: Sheriff

Postby LukeJavan8 » Mon Dec 01, 2014 6:16 pm

Hereabouts I've heard "language police".
-----please, draw me a sheep-----

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Slava
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Re: Sheriff

Postby Slava » Sun Sep 03, 2023 10:25 am

I noticed that gerefa is not traced here, so I thought I'd try to track it down. It appears we don't know whence it cometh. It did, however, end up becoming reeve, which is a word currently in use in parts of the English-speaking world. My theory is that it's related to rabbi, which is also rebbe, and I can easily see that being related to reeve. The question is, which came first?
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