Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In England, formerly, the head of a borough; the chief of a frank-pledge, tithing, or decennary.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun engraving The chief of a frankpledge, tithing, or decennary, consisting of ten families; -- called also
borsholder ,boroughhead ,boroughholder , and sometimestithingman . Seeborsholder . - noun (Modern Law), engraving A petty constable.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun obsolete The
head of afrankpledge ortithing - noun obsolete A petty
constable in aparish
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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About ten days before the time of which I am speaking, I was visited by various alguazils, accompanied by a kind of headborough, who made a small seizure of Testaments and Gypsy Gospels, which happened to be lying about.
The Bible in Spain; or, the journeys, adventures, and imprisonments of an Englishman, in an attempt to circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula George Henry Borrow 1842
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About ten days before the time of which I am speaking, I was visited by various alguazils, accompanied by a kind of headborough, who made a small seizure of Testaments and Gypsy Gospels, which happened to be lying about.
The Bible in Spain 1712
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He is BONUS SOCIUS with headborough and constable.
Redgauntlet 2008
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Is there no constable, nor headborough, though, to take me out of his house? for I am sure I can safely swear the peace against him: But, alas! he is greater than any constable: he is a justice himself: Such a justice deliver me from! —
Pamela 2006
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When the iudges haue giuen sentence of life, or of deathe, the sentence is brought to the headborough of the Citie (whom we call the Mayour) and they Licomegia: he supplieth the place of the King.
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Goldthred had a fierce dispute with the headborough, whom he had summoned to aid him in raising the country.
Kenilworth 2004
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Had I but known, I could have made twenty shifts; nay, for that matter, and in so good a cause, I would have thought little to have prigged a prancer from the next common — it had but been sending back the brute to the headborough.
Kenilworth 2004
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An under-officer of Cossacks and a headborough ‡ came out.
A Hero of Our Time 2003
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“There is one other lodging,” answered the headborough, scratching his head.
A Hero of Our Time 2003
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‡ Desyatnik, a superintendent of ten (men or huts), i.e. an officer like the old English tithing-man or headborough.
A Hero of Our Time 2003
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