Shire

A shire is a traditional term for a division of land, found in the United Kingdom and Australia. It was first used in Wessex from the beginning of Anglo-Saxon settlement, and spread to most of the rest of England in the tenth century.

The word derives from the Old English scir, itself a derivative of the Proto-Germanic skizo (cf. Old High German scira), meaning care or official charge. In Britain, "shire" is the original term for what is usually known now as a county; the word county having been introduced at the Norman Conquest of England. The two are nearly synonymous. Although in modern British usage counties are referred to as "shires" mainly in poetic contexts, terms such as Shire Hall remain common. Shire also remains a common part of many county names.

In some rural parts of Australia, a shire is a local government area; however, in Australia it is not synonymous with a "county", which is a lands administrative division.

In regions with so-called rhotic pronunciation such as Scotland, the word shire is pronounced /ˈʃaɪr/ or /ˈʃaɪər/. In non-rhotic areas the final R is silent unless the next word begins in a vowel. When shire is a suffix as part of a placename in the UK, the vowel is unstressed and thus usually shortened and/or monophthongised: pronunciations include /ʃɜːr/, or sometimes /ʃɪər/, with the pronunciation of the final R again depending on rhoticity. In many words, the vowel is normally reduced all the way to a single schwa, as in for instance Leicestershire /ˈlɛstəʃə/ or Berkshire /ˈbɑːkʃə/. Outside the UK, and especially in the USA, it is more common for shire as part of a placename to be pronounced identically to the full word, as a result of spelling pronunciation.

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