sovereigntyship

English

Etymology

From sovereignty +‎ -ship.

Noun

sovereigntyship (countable and uncountable, plural sovereigntyships)

1. (rare) Synonym of sovereignship
   • 1575, Gabriel Harvey, edited by Edward John Long Scott, Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey, London: Camden Society, published 1884, page 92:

     For methinkes it doth my harte good, my soverayne Syr, to use your soveraynetieshippes gaye and newfashionid words.

   • 1809 February 18, Timothy Pickering, “Letter to Judge Peters”, in Charles W[entworth] Upham, Octavius Pickering, editors, The Life of Timothy Pickering, volume IV, Boston, M.A.: Little, Brown, and Company, published 1873, page 159:

     Some one of your city sovereigns, perhaps the Lord Mayor himself, was so obliging as to send me one of the handbills giving notice of my intended elevation; but, unfortunately, it did not reach me until the day after their sovereigntyships had hung and burnt me, so that I felt neither the cord nor the flame.

   • 1857, R[obert] Montgomery Martin, The Indian Empire: […], London: The London Printing and Publishing Company, Limited, page 27:

     Nothing but the complicated system of our absentee sovereigntyship, can account for such strange persistence in errors which have repeatedly brought the Company to the verge of bankruptcy, and inflicted on the mass of the people chronic poverty and periodical famine.

References

• “sovereigntyship, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.