Forestrie

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The archaic system of law, administration and officers that governed a royal hunting forest and the land within it
2. An obsolete term for the legal jurisdiction and official authority exercised over a royal forest and its game
3. The old body of rules and forest officials that controlled the use of a royal woodland reserved for hunting

Etymology: Forestrie is a Middle English word meaning the office, jurisdiction, or territory of a forester, and more broadly the body of law and custom governing a royal forest. It was borrowed from Old French "forestrie" (also spelled "forest(e)rie"), itself derived from "forestier," meaning forester or forest official. That French noun descends from medieval Latin "forestarius," the keeper of a forest, and the Latin root "forestis" is the source of English "forest." The word has a surprising twist in its usage: the forest in medieval England was not primarily a wooded area but a legal category. A royal forest was a tract of land set aside for the king's hunting, where special laws applied regardless of whether trees grew there. Forestrie therefore names a legal and administrative domain as much as a landscape, which is why the term appears in records of forest courts and the officers who enforced forest law. The word is now obsolete, surviving mainly in historical and legal writing about medieval England.