Word.ws English Dictionary

halywercfolk

halywercfolk noun: in Old English law, tenants who held land by the service of repairing or defending a church or monument, whereby they were exempted from feudal and military services.

Noun

halywercfolk (uncountable)

  1. In Old English law, tenants who held land by the service of repairing or defending a church or monument, whereby they were exempted from feudal and military services.
    • For such persons within the bishopric of Durham as held their lands by the service of defending the corpse of St Cuthbert were called Halywercfolk, and claimed the privilege of not being forced to go out of the bishopric either by the King or Bishop.1874, Thomas Blount, William Carew Hazlitt, Tenures of Land & Customs of Manors, page 429

Origin of halywercfolk

Learned borrowing from Old English hāliġ (“holy”) + weorc (“work”) + folc (“folk”).

Questions about halywercfolk

What does halywercfolk mean?
Halywercfolk means in Old English law, tenants who held land by the service of repairing or defending a church or monument, whereby they were exempted from feudal and military services.
What part of speech is halywercfolk?
Halywercfolk is a noun.

Words near halywercfolk in the dictionary

  1. Halyikwamai
  2. Halyna
  3. halysin
  4. halysitid
  5. halysitids
  6. halywercfolk
  7. halzoun
  8. ham
  9. ham and beef shop
  10. ham and beef shops
  11. ham and eggs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: halywercfolk (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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