purlieu
[\ PUR-loo \] , noun;
1. A place where one may range at large; confines or bounds.
2. A person's haunt or resort.
3. An outlying district or region, as of a town or city.
4. A piece of land on the edge of a forest, originally land that, after having been included in a royal forest, was restored to private ownership, though still subject, in some respects, to the operation of the forest laws.
Quotes:
"A purlieu is an area at the edge of a royal forest that used to be under forest law but isn't any more."
-- Edward Rutherfurd, The Forest
"She thought of the strange operation of a simple-minded man's ruling passion, that it should have led Jude, who loved her and the children so tenderly, to place them here in this depressing purlieu ."
~Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure: Volume 1896, Part 1
Origin:
Purlieu is an alteration (simulating French lieu , "place") of earlier parlewe , "of a forest."
POWERED BY 4INFO
Source: Internet - Dictionary.com
