Vicecomitatus

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A historical term referring to a district governed by a vice count or deputy
2. denoting a region in which the authority of a vice count is exercised
3. describing a specific administrative division under the jurisdiction of nobility in medieval governance

Etymology: Vicecomitatus is a Medieval Latin legal term, built from "vice" ("in place of", the ablative of "vix" in the sense of substitute) and "comitatus", the territory of a "comes" or count. The "vicecomes" was a deputy who ran the affairs of a county on behalf of its count, and "vicecomitatus" named the district he governed. The Latin itself is a clear compound, so the interesting part is the office behind it: the same role gave English the word "sheriff", from Old English "scīrgerēfa", "shire-reeve", and the French "vicomte" (viscount) carries the same title in another rank. Medieval records use the term for the jurisdiction the sheriff exercised, which is why it appears in charters and legal writing from the Anglo-Norman and continental period. In the British and continental context it lived almost entirely in Latin documents, so readers encountering it today are usually meeting a scholarly coinage drawn from a historical system rather than a word that passed into everyday speech.