commonage
(ˈkɒmənɪdʒ)
Also 7 comonage.
[f. common n. (or v.) + -age.]
1. a. The practice of commoning; right of common; usually ‘common of pasture’, or the right of pasturing animals on common land.
| 1610 W. Folkingham Art of Survey iii. iv. 70 Swannage, Warrenage, Commonage, Piscage, etc. 1642 Fuller Holy & Prof. St. i. xiii. 100 If proportionable allotments be made to the poore for their commonage. 1792 A. Young Trav. France 446 Open fields..shackled with the rights of commonage. 1884 Pall Mall G. 13 Nov. 8/2 Restrictions concerning grazing and turbary on mountains over which they claim commonage. |
b. The condition of land held in common, or subject to rights of common.
| 1808 Chron. in Ann. Reg. 114/1 To enclose more than 20,000 acres of land..at this time in a state of commonage. 1828 Southey Ess. (1832) II. 250 The custom of such a tenantry is to throw the ground into a sort of commonage. |
c. concr. Estate or property held in common; common land, a common. Also in S. Afr.
| 1771 Goldsm. Hist. Eng. II. 131 He [Wat Tyler] required that..all commonages should be open to the poor as well as the rich. 1866 Reader 24 Feb. 199/3 The commonages..which never were held by feudal tenure, but were allodial lands. 1885 W. Greswell in Macm. Mag. Feb. 281/1 Wains drawn by spans of 16 or 20 oxen are outspanned on the village commonage. 1893 Westm. Gaz. 23 May 6/1 A farm adjoining the Kimberley commonage. 1900 Daily News 24 Apr. 5/4 Two young Dutchmen acting as spies..were found hidden in a Kaffir hut on Barkly Commonage. |
d. A body of commoners.
| 1882 Western Daily Press 15 May 3/4 A list of the commonage was drawn up. |
2. The estate of the commons, the commonalty.
| 1649 Selden Laws Eng. ii. xl. (1739) 177 The lowest ebb that ever the Commonage of England indured. 1848 Thackeray Van. Fair ix, The whole baronetage, peerage, commonage of England. |