under feudalism, heritable land held from a lord in return for service
Origin of fief
Fr: see fee
noun
- An example of a fief is a legal practice the Middle Ages where society was built on relationships and classes.
- An example of a fief is a piece of land that is entrusted to someone for their use and the use of their heirs.
The definition of a fief is something that someone has control over, particularly when a lord gives a person the ongoing use of land by a person and his heirs in return for that person giving allegiance to the lord.
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Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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fief
THE AMERICAN HERITAGE® DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FIFTH EDITION by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries. Copyright © 2016, 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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Noun
(plural fiefs)
Origin
From Old French fief (whence also fee), from Medieval Latin fevum, a variant of feudum, from Old Frankish *fehu (“cattle, livestock”), from Proto-Germanic *fehu (“cattle, sheep”), from Proto-Indo-European *peku-, *peḱu- (“sheep”). See fee for cognates.
English Wiktionary. Available under CC-BY-SA license.
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"Fief." YourDictionary. LoveToKnow. www.yourdictionary.com/FIEF.
APA Style
Fief. (n.d.). In YourDictionary. Retrieved from https://www.yourdictionary.com/FIEF
Sentence Examples
- Each fief was organized like the kingdom.
- The help afforded by Ertoghrul to the Seljukian monarch on a critical occasion led to the addition of Sugut to his fief, with which he was now formally invested.
- Lothair was crowned emperor at the Lateran in June 1133, and as a further reward Innocent gave him the territories of the Countess Mathilda as a fief, but refused to surrender the right of investiture.
- His daughter Marie sold the fief of Coucy to Louis, duke of Orleans, in 1400.
- For assistance, and submitted to accept his kingdom from him as a fief of the Holy See.
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