Word.ws English Dictionary

tanistries

tanistries is the plural of tanistry.

Meaning of tanistry

Noun

tanistry (usually uncountable, plural tanistries)

  1. (historical, usually) A form of tenure, in ancient Scotland and Ireland, whereby succession was passed to an elected member of the same extended family.
    • They also have to make allowance, in place of primogeniture, for the practice of tanistry, that is, the naming of a successor who was not necessarily the ruler's son.2011, Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms, Penguin, published 2012, page 50

Questions about tanistries

What is tanistries the plural of?
Tanistries is the plural of tanistry.

Words near tanistries in the dictionary

  1. Tanishas
  2. Tanishpa's dwarf gecko
  3. Tanishpa's dwarf geckos
  4. tanist
  5. tanistic
  6. tanistries
  7. tanistry
  8. tanists
  9. tanistship
  10. tanistships
  11. Tanit

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tanistries (page history and authors); tanistry (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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Cite this entry: “tanistries.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tanistries. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.