▪ I. bordage1 Feudal System.
(ˈbɔːdɪdʒ)
[a. OF. bordage (still in local use in France), = med.L. bordāgium, f. OF. borde, med.L. borda cot + -age: see bordar. (Erroneously connected in Eng. dictionaries, from Manley and Blount downwards, with bord ‘table’, but clearly explained and illustrated by Du Cange, and in French use by Godefroy.)]
The tenure by which a bordar held his cot at the will of his lord; the services due from a bordar. (As an Eng. word only in modern historians.)
| a 1300 Coust. de Norm. i. iii. 15 (Du Cange) Tenure par bordage, si est comme aucune borde [later edd. add loge ou maison] est baillie à aucun pour fere les vils services son Seignor: ne poet lomme cel fiement ne vendre, ne engagier ne donner, et de {cced}'en n'est pas homage fet. 1664 Spelman Gloss. s.v. Bordarii, Bordage. 1771 Antiq. Sarisb. 29 From the Grand Customer of Normandy we learn, that Bordage was a base tenure, where such a house or cottage was obliged to thresh, draw water, grind corn, and do such other servile work. |
▪ II. bordage2
(ˈbɔːdɪdʒ)
[a. F. bordage, f. bord side, border to border.]
1. Naut. ‘The planking on a ship's side.’ Mod. Dicts.
2. That which forms the border of anything.
| 1860 Sir W. Logan in Borthwick Brit. Amer. Reader 149 When forced into a narrow part of the channel, the lateral pressure it [the ice] there exerts drives the bordage up the banks, where it sometimes accumulates to the height of from forty to fifty feet. |