shire
noun
one of the counties of Great Britain.
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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:
The family showed shire horses, he said, which his son was passionate about.
From BBC ● May 13, 2026
Buckingham Palace said the teddies had been collected with the help of shire horses and almost 200 volunteers - and were being "well looked after".
From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2022
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
A giant metal box sits in a field next to the shire council: one of several air-quality monitoring stations paid for by the mining and power-generating industries.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 11, 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
For many locals, their initial fear was quietened by the knowledge that the missing man's ire was directed at authorities, Alpine Shire Deputy Mayor Sarah Nicholas told the BBC.
From BBC ● Feb. 25, 2026
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
Spoken-word artists have found popular acclaim, from Gil Scott-Heron to Kae Tempest and Warsan Shire on Beyoncé’s “Lemonade.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 19, 2025
The town, home to about 1,000 people, is part of the Alpine Shire local government area.
From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2025
As for the Hobbits of the Shire, with whom these tales are concerned, in the days of their peace and prosperity they were a merry folk.
From "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien
There we first saw the Shiré emerge, and there also we first gazed on the broad waters of Nyassa.
From The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 by Horace Waller
About eighty miles from the mouth, the Zambesi receives the waters of the Shiré, which flows out from Lake Nyassa.
From The World and Its People: Book VII Views in Africa by Anna B. Badlam
The Chipéta have many lines of marking: they are all only divisions of the great Manganja tribe, and their dialects differ very slightly from that spoken by the same people on the Shiré.
From The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 by Horace Waller
From the very first Livingstone saw the importance of the Shiré Valley and Lake Nyassa as the key to Central Africa.
From The Personal Life of David Livingstone by William Garden Blaikie
Crocodiles are very numerous in the river Shiré.
From The World and Its People: Book VII Views in Africa by Anna B. Badlam
Look at the surnames of Londoners compared to those in the shires.
From New York Times ● Apr. 15, 2017
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
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 bogus Twitter page depicts Mrs Bone standing in her kitchen in Northamptonshire, known by its appreciators as "the rose of the shires", in true Margaret Thatcher pose.
From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2011
He afterwards established the 'Manchester Courier,' which he for some time edited, and was well-known in the northern shires.
From The Bront? Family, Vol. 1 of 2 with special reference to Patrick Branwell Bront? by Francis A. Leyland
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.
