shrieve

Obsolete form of sheriff.

Noun

  1. Obsolete form of sheriff.
    • Please it your Majesty, here is the shrieve of Northamptonshire, with certain persons that of late committed a riot, and have appealed to your Majesty beseeching your Highness for special cause to hear them. - 1591,...
    • I know him: he was a botcher's 'prentice in Paris, from whence he was whipped for getting the shrieve's fool with child: a dumb innocent that could not say him nay. - c. 1604–1605 (date written), William Shakespeare,...

Origin

See sheriff.

Forms

shrieves

Related

shrieval shrievalty

Verb

  1. Obsolete form of shrive.
    • […]he ordered [father Jerome] to be called and shrieve the prisoner. - 1764, Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto:
    • He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away The Albatross's blood. - 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere:
    • The jealous churl hath deeply swore, That, if again he venture o’er, He shall shrieve penitent no more. - 1808 February 22, Walter Scott, “Canto First. The Castle.”, in Marmion; a Tale of Flodden Field, Edinburgh: […]...
  2. To question.
    • But afterwards she gan him soft to shrieve, And wooe with fair intreatie, to disclose Which of the nymphes his heart so sore did mieve: - 1596, Edmund Spenser, “The Faerie Queene”, in Henry John Todd, editor, The Works...

Origin

See shrive.

Forms

shrieves shrieving shrieved shriven