Fief

Quick meaning: Fief is a noun meaning (law, historical) Land held of a superior, particularly on condition of homage, fealty, and personal service, especially military service.

Meaning

(law, historical) Land held of a superior, particularly on condition of homage, fealty, and personal service, especially military service.

More Meanings

1. (figurative) Synonym of estate: any land, when considered as a region over which the owner exercises lordly control.
2. (figurative) A territory, a domain, an area over which one exercises lordly control, particularly with regard to corporate or governmental bureaucracies.

Example Sentences

Where a vassal kills the brother, son, or grandson of his lord, he should lose his fief on account of it.

Investiture was the conferring of a fief by the lord to the vassal, and the rite consisted in the handing over by the lord of some symbolic object intended to represent the act of concession.

The chief obligation of a sipahi was to take up residence on his fief and to be prepared at all times to rally, armed for battle, to his banner-holder's flag on the sultan's order. According to the income of his fief, every sipahi had to raise a fixed number of armed horsemen (cebeli), who followed him on campaigns.

Through the years of my childhood my maternal grandmother remained the one unforgettable presence, the strong country woman ruling over her farm like a medieval lord. On her fief I first opened my eyes to poetry and to the land. […] There was something of the ancient matriarch in her, who had given her life to the ground, who felt that on her fief in southern Luxembourg she stood in the right place.

Word Forms

• fiefs

Synonyms for fief

Depending on context, synonyms include fee, estate.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include fee, estate, domain, clan, stronghold, feud.

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