shire
noun
one of the counties of Great Britain.
shire
1 American
[shahyuhr]
/ ʃaɪər /
noun
-
shires
plural
-
one of the counties of Great Britain.
-
the Shires, the counties in the Midlands in which hunting is especially popular.
Shire
2
American
[shahyuhr]
/ ʃaɪər /
noun
Shiré
3
American
[shee-rey]
/ ˈʃi reɪ /
noun
shire
1
British
/ ʃaɪə /
noun
-
-
one of the British counties
-
( in combination )
Yorkshire
-
-
(in Australia) a rural district having its own local council
-
See shire horse
-
the Midland counties of England, esp Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, famous for hunting, etc
Shire
2
British
/ ˈʃɪəreɪ /
noun
shire
3
British
/ ʃaɪə /
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of shire1
before 900; Middle English; Old English scīr office of administration, jurisdiction of such an office, county
Origin of Shire2
1875–80; apparently so called because it was bred in the shires, i.e., those counties of west and central England whose names end in -shire
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"It's not an easy thing to go through a grieving process... and it's particularly not easy when there's been so much attention," cattle farmer and councillor for the shire Nathan Hersey told the BBC.
From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2025
More recently, his works have also provided a fertile shire for nationalists who see themselves in his heroic archetypes.
From New York Times ● Sep. 21, 2022
“Water is sour, the air is lonely here / And all the noises of this natural shire / From stable or from sty are not enough,” Mr. Howard wrote in one poem.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 1, 2022
One comment simply read: "Anything that ends with shire will do me, Lincolnshire or Yorkshire."
From BBC ● Oct. 28, 2021
There were dappled Percherons from France and shire geldings of tremendous size built to bear the weight of men in armor.
From "The Door in the Wall" by Marguerite de Angeli
Everything else, including her art collection with works by Peter Shire, Jim Shaw, Rashid Johnson and Lesley Vance, was lost to the flames.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 27, 2026
The town, home to about 1,000 people, is part of the Alpine Shire local government area.
From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2025
The Progress Flag has since been removed from Shire Hall following the end of Pride Month.
From BBC ● Jul. 2, 2025
But, as his sister Talia Shire told reporters in Cannes, Coppola is always facing forward.
From Seattle Times ● May 18, 2024
Fond as he was of Frodo, Fatty Bolger had no desire to leave the Shire, nor to see what lay outside it.
From "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien
The navigation of the Shiré was difficult, for the "Pioneer" being deep in the water would often run aground.
From The Personal Life of David Livingstone by William Garden Blaikie
In 1863 he was again exploring the Shiré Valley and Lake Nyassa, when an order came from Her Majesty's Government, recalling the Expedition.
From The Personal Life of David Livingstone by William Garden Blaikie
Next year--1859--was devoted mainly to three successive trips on the river Shiré, the third being signalized by the discovery of Lake Nyassa.
From The Personal Life of David Livingstone by William Garden Blaikie
Then he adverts to the wonderful freedom from sickness that his party had enjoyed in the delta of the Zambesi, and proceeds to give an account of the Shiré Valley and its people.
From The Personal Life of David Livingstone by William Garden Blaikie
When we were on the Shiré we used to swing the ship into mid-stream every night, in order to let the air which was put in motion by the water, pass from end to end.
It is one of the society’s 20 kingdoms in North America, each of which is subdivided into provinces, baronies and shires.
From New York Times ● Dec. 23, 2018
The 1,200 constituents who showed up for his forum — residents of Hollywood, Burbank, Silver Lake — are terrified of what’s been wrought by the faraway shires of Oshkosh, Grand Rapids, Erie and Dayton.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 22, 2017
But away from the nostalgia and a sense of living in the shires, do boundary changes actually matter?
From BBC ● Aug. 1, 2013
Railing at wind farms from his perch in his favorite pub in the Kent countryside, Farage tries to articulate the fading voice of the English shires.
From Newsweek ● Mar. 11, 2013
The Throndelaw was a group of "folks" or shires about the Throndhjem Firth, a region that had developed considerable solidarity and in one sense was reckoned as the heart of the kingdom.
From Canute the Great The Rise of Danish Imperialism during the Viking Age by Laurence Marcellus Larson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
