Word.ws English Dictionary

bailiff-errant

bailiff-errant noun: an official employed by the sheriff to carry out summonses, writs etc. within the county.

Noun

bailiff-errant (plural bailiffs-errant)

  1. (historical) An official employed by the sheriff to carry out summonses, writs etc. within the county.
    • The warrant straight was made, and therewithall / A Baylieffe-errant forth in post did passe […].1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • This Return is not good, because this Arrest is the proper Arrest of the Sheriff, and no Credit is to be given to the Bailiff errant.1727, The Compleat Sheriff, page 311

Forms of bailiff-errant

pluralbailiffs-errant

Questions about bailiff-errant

What does bailiff-errant mean?
Bailiff-errant means an official employed by the sheriff to carry out summonses, writs etc. within the county.
What part of speech is bailiff-errant?
Bailiff-errant is a noun.
What is the plural of bailiff-errant?
The plural of bailiff-errant is bailiffs-errant.

Words near bailiff-errant in the dictionary

  1. bailie
  2. bailies
  3. bailieship
  4. Bailieston
  5. bailiff
  6. bailiff-errant
  7. bailiffries
  8. bailiffry
  9. bailiffs
  10. bailiffs-errant
  11. bailiffship

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bailiff-errant (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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