pannage means acorns and beech mast used as forage for pigs. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 90 out of 100.
Why “pannage” is a great word
The right or practice of allowing swine to forage for fallen acorns, beech mast, and other forest nuts. From Middle English pannage, borrowed from Old French pasnage, from Medieval Latin pasnadium or pastionaticum, from Latin pastionare ('to feed on mast, as swine'), from pastio ('a pasturing, grazing'), from pascere ('to feed'). Unlike forage, a broad term for gathered food, or mast, the nuts themselves, pannage is the specific, autumnal institution of the pig in the woods. It is the sound of husks crunching in the dim light, the rich scent of loam churned by rooting snouts, and the image of herds driven along ancient trackways to their seasonal feast—a contract between man, beast, and tree that roots property in the cyclical bounty of decay.
Etymology
Borrowed into Middle English from Old French pasnage (modern French panage), from Late Latin pasnadium, pastinaticum, from pastionare (“to feed on mast, as swine”), from Latin pastio (“a pasturing, grazing”). See pastor.
noun
- Acorns and beech mast used as forage for pigs.
- Feeding of pigs on acorns and beech mast in the woods.
- The right to feed pigs in this manner.
- A tax formerly paid for the privilege of feeding swine in the woods.“There is there a certain wood called Heton-woode in oaks and the like, in which the tenants of Heton, who hold by charter in fee, have house-bote and hay-bote, of the delivery of the lord; by which that wood is wasted [or much destroyed, destruitur], and on that account does not grow again as much in yearly value, in wood, pannage, or other issues of a wood.”
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