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province|ˈprɒvɪns|
Also 4 (Sc.) prowince, 5 prouynse.
[a. F. province (13th c. in Godef. Compl.), ad. L. prōvincia an official duty, a charge, a province. Of uncertain derivation: that which offers itself at first sight, from prō, pro-1 1 + vincĕre to conquer (although it may in later times have affected the application of the word) does not explain the earliest known use in Latin. See Walde Lat. Etym. Wbch. s.v.
1904W. M. Ramsay in Expositor Oct. 243 A ‘Province’ to the Roman mind meant literally a ‘sphere of duty’, and was an administrative, not a geographical fact; the Province of a magistrate might be the stating of law in Rome, or the superintendence of a great road, or the administration of a region or district of the world; but it was not and could not be, except in a loose and derivative way, a tract of country.]
I.
1. a. Rom. Hist. A country or territory outside Italy, under Roman dominion, and administered by a governor sent from Rome. (In L. also the official charge or administration of such a territory.)
a1380St. Augustin 64 in Horstm. Altengl. Leg. (1878) 62 Austin þe doctour..Boren was in þe prouince of Affrican. 1382Wyclif Acts xxiii. 34 Whanne he hadde rad, and axid, of what prouynce he was,..knowinge for he was of Cilice. c1400Destr. Troy 100 Tessaile.., A prouynce appropret aperte to Rome. 1615G. Sandys Trav. 144 His Ethnarchy reduced into a Romane Prouince, and the gouernment thereof committed vnto Pontius Pilate by Tyberius Cæsar. 1755W. Duncan tr. Sel. Orat. Cicero xi. (1816) 389 You obtained a consular province. 1904W. M. Ramsay in Expositor Oct. 244 The Province was the aspect in which Rome presented itself to the people of Asia; and conversely the Province was the form under which the people of Asia constituted a part of the Empire.
†b. The country of Provence in South Eastern France, which was one of the earliest Roman provinces. Obs.
1560J. Daus tr. Sleidane's Comm. 140 b, He marched through the myddest of Italye..tyll he came in to prouynce of Fraunce. Ibid. 219 Ther be in the French prouince a people called Valdois. 1563Homilies ii. Idolatry ii. (1640) 28 Massile, the head Towne of Gallia Narbonensis (now called the Province).
2. a. An administrative division of a country or state; any principal division of a kingdom or empire, esp. one that has been historically, linguistically, or dialectally distinct, as the provinces of Ireland, Spain, Italy, Prussia, Russia, India, and the old provinces of France; spec. in recent use, Northern Ireland. Formerly sometimes applied to the shires of England.
1382Wyclif Esther iii. 13 And the lettris..ben sent bi the corouris of the king to alle his prouyncis. 1387Trevisa Higden (Rolls) I. 259 Franconia is, as it were, þe myddel prouynce of Germania, and haþ in þe est side Thuryngia, in þe west Sueuia. Ibid. II. 87 The prouince of Yorke extendethe hit oonly now from the arche of the floode of Humbre on to the floode of Teyse. c1400Mandeville (Roxb.) xxv. 119 Þe land..es diuided in xii. prouincez. 1494Fabyan Chron. v. xc. 67 Thenne Hengiste beganne his Lordshyp ouer the Prouynce of Kent. 1593Shakes. 2 Hen. VI, i. i. 120 Aniou and Maine? My selfe did win them both: Those Prouinces, these Armes of mine did conquer. 1610Holland Camden's Brit. (1637) 182 My perambulation through the Provinces or Shires of Britaine. 1617Moryson Itin. ii. 274 The Lord President..left the Prouince of Mounster to meet the Lord Deputy at Galloway in Connaght. 1625N. Carpenter Geog. Del. ii. xv. (1635) 260 Our mountainous Prouinces of Deuon and Cornwall haue not deserued so ill. 1706Phillips s.v., The United Provinces of the Netherlands, the Seven Northern Provinces of the Low-Countries, that made a firm Alliance at Utrecht, a.d. 1579, by which they united themselves, so as never to be divided. 1794Mrs. Radcliffe Myst. Udolpho i, On the pleasant banks of the Garonne, in the province of Gascony. 1804Europ. Mag. XLV. 35/2 They divided the country into four provinces, viz. Ulster, Leinster, Munster and Connaught, each of which had its King. 1841W. Spalding Italy & It. Isl. III. 383 Corsica..is still a province of that kingdom [France]. 1908Whitaker's Alm. 491/1 The Central Provinces [of India] were formed in 1861 out of territory taken from the North-West Provinces and Madras. 1972Ann. Reg. 1971 26 A horrifying escalation of violence in the Province. 1977[see sense 10 below].
†b. Applied to the North American Colonies of Great Britain, now provinces of Canada; also formerly to several of those which after the War of Independence united to form the United States of America.
Of the latter, chiefly applied to those colonies which were denominated provinces in their charters, some being so termed from the first, others only at a later date. Generally, but not universally, colonies having a royal governor, and some having proprietary governors, were ‘provinces’.
1622(Aug. 10) Grant in Capt. John Mason (Prince Soc.) 180 All that part of y⊇ maine land in New England..wch the said Sr Ferdinando Gorges and Capt. John Mason..intend to name y⊇ Province of Maine. 1682(Mar. 4) Charter Chas. II to W. Penn in Poore Fed. & St. Constit. II. 1510 We do hereby erect the aforesaid Country and Islands into a Province and Seigniore, and doe call itt Pensilvania. 1691I. Mather in Andros Tracts II. 289 Now that the Massachusets Colony is made a Province. 1717Commission to J. Wentworth (N.H. Provl. Pa. II. 712), We have constituted and appointed Samuel Shute Esq. our Captain General and Governor in chief in and over our Province of New Hampshire, in New England, in America. 1758Commission to F. Bernard (N.J. Docts. IX. 23), The Division of East and West New Jersey in America, which we have thought fit to reunite into one Province and settle under one entire Government. 1832Encycl. Brit. (ed. 7) VI. 55 In the year 1791 it [Canada] was divided, by an act of the British parliament, into the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. 1878Whitaker's Alm. 246 By an act passed in 1867, the provinces of Canada (Ontario and Quebec), Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, were united under the title of ‘Dominion of Canada’, and provision was made..for the admission at any subsequent period of the other provinces and territories of British North America. 1898E. B. Greene Provincial Govnr. in Eng. Colonies of N.A. 15 When James Duke of York became king, New York ceased to be a proprietary colony and became a royal province.
c. fig. A main division of any ‘realm’.
1869J. Martineau Ess. II. 172 Our earth is but a province of a wider realm. 1880Swinburne Stud. Shaks. 73 Their spotted souls..hovering for an hour..on the confines of either province of hell.
3. Eccl.
a. The district within the jurisdiction of an archbishop or a metropolitan (in quot. 1377 applied to a diocese); formerly, also, that within the jurisdiction of a synod of a Presbyterian church.
1377Langl. P. Pl. B. xv. 562 Euery bisshop..is holden, Thorw his prouynce to passe and to his peple to shewe hym. 1425Rolls of Parlt. IV. 291/1 Write to the Chirche of York for that Provynce. 1454Ibid. V. 249/1 The Clergie of the Province of Caunterbury. 1580Register of Privy Council Scot. III. 277 The diocie or province of Louthiane. 1610Holland Camden's Brit. (1637) 181 The Provinciall Synods in both Provinces. 1649(title) An Apologetic Declaration of the conscientious Presbyterians of the Province of London. 1852Hook Ch. Dict. 617. 1861 J. G. Sheppard Fall Rome xii. 644 To the parochial cities were attached bishops, to the provinces metropolitans, to the dioceses patriarchs.
b. One of the territorial divisions of an ecclesiastical or ecclesiastico-military order, as the Knights Templars, the Franciscans, the Jesuits, or of the Propaganda.
1727–41Chambers Cycl. s.v., The general of the order has several provinces under him. 1839Penny Cycl. XIII. 110/2 Although they [the Jesuits] had also their respective generals residing at Rome, yet their authority over the distant convents of the various provinces was very limited. 1848Secr. Societies, Templars 244 Besides these offices of the Order [the Templars] there were the Great-priors, Great-preceptors, or Provincial Masters..of the three Provinces of Jerusalem, Tripoli, and Antioch.
4. More vaguely, A country, territory, district, or region; a part of the world or of one of its continents.
c1330R. Brunne Chron. (1810) 332 His sonne Edward þe prince, & fiftene for his sake, Þre hundred of þe prouince, knyghtes wild he make. 1484Caxton Fables of æsop iv. viii, They came in to the prouynce of the apes. 1555Eden Decades 52 Owre men fownde certen trees in this prouince [Cartagena], which bore greate plentie of sweete apples. 1604E. G[rimstone] D'Acosta's Hist. Indies iii. x. 151 Distinct seas, taking their names from the Provinces they bathe. 1751Johnson Rambler No. 142 ⁋7 The whole province flocks together as to a general festivity. Ibid. No. 165 ⁋14 Some had long moved to distant provinces.
5. pl. A comprehensive designation for all parts of a country outside the capital or chief seat of government; e.g. of France apart from Paris, or England apart from London. Cf. provincial A. 4.[Of French origin, and referring to the old Provinces of France as distinct from L'Île de France and its capital Paris. Cf. Littré, la province ‘all that is in France outside the capital (often with the notion of that which is behind in fashion, manners, or taste)’. Sometimes also in the plural les provinces (1671 in Mme. de Sévigné). In reference to England chiefly an expression of the London newspapers, or of London actors who ‘star the provinces’.] [1638Baker tr. Balzac's Lett. (vol. III.) 31 This sweete ayre of the wide world, and these dainties of the spirit, which are not common in our Provinces.] 1789Ann. Agric. XI. 293 All the animation, vigour, life, and energy of luxury, consumption, and industry, which flow with a full tide through this kingdom, wherever there is a free communication between the capital and the provinces. 1804–6Syd. Smith Mor. Philos. (1850) 168 Those opnions go down by the mail⁓coach, to regulate all matters of taste for the provinces. 1849Thackeray Pendennis xix, She had..starred the provinces with great eclat and had come back to London. 1874L. Stephen Hours in Library Ser. i. vi. 341 The provinces differ from Paris in the nature of the social warfare. 1882C. Pebody Eng. Journalism xii. 88 In the provinces, as in London, Liberal journalists outnumber the Conservatives. 1882Freeman in Longm. Mag. I. 89, I have even known a New York paper speak of the rest of the United States as ‘the provinces’. 1882[see provincial a. 4]. 1896Cosmopolitan XX. 442 Mr. Pastor's company all came back from giving pleasure to what English writers would call ‘the provinces’. 1896Law Times CI. 573/2 The full force of the Bench is required to deal effectually with the work in London and the provinces.
6. a. Nat. Hist. A faunal or floral area less extensive than a ‘region’, or containing a distinctive group of animal or plant communities; a sub-region.
1847H. C. Watson Cybele Britannica I. 14 Eighteen ‘Provinces’, or groups of counties, have been marked out on the map; and..they will be found more natural sections of the island than are the counties themselves. 1860Q. Jrnl. Geol. Soc. XVI. p. xxxv, Thus natural provinces are constituted, each including a considerable number of forms peculiar to itself. 1877Huxley Anat. Inv. Anim. 19 Certain areas of the earth's surface are inhabited by groups of animals and plants..not found elsewhere... Such areas are termed Provinces of Distribution. 1885Lyell Elem. Geol. (ed. 4) 96 The sea and land may be divided into..distinct areas or provinces, each peopled by a peculiar assemblage of animals and plants. 1932Fuller & Conard tr. Braun-Blanquet's Plant Sociol. xiv. 355 The province is..characterized by at least one climax community. 1947R. Good Geogr. Flowering Plants ii. 38 This classification divides the floras and floristic units of the world first into kingdoms, then into regions.., and finally into provinces. 1957P. Dansereau Biogeography i. 54 Each area (the provinces here) holds a more or less heterogeneous residue of the units that have fared variously in the course of its total history. 1973J. W. Valentine Evolutionary Paleoecol. Marine Biosphere iii. 74 The regions that constitute distributional units of organisms are called bio⁓geographical regions or provinces (biotic provinces, faunal provinces, floral provinces, and so on). 1974Sci. Amer. Apr. 83/3 The marine faunas today are partitioned into more than 30 provinces, among which there is in general only a low percentage of common species.
b. In full petrographic province or petrographical province. An area of igneous rocks that appear to have been formed during the same period of igneous activity, presumably from the same magma. [cf. G. geognostisch bezirk (H. Vogelsang 1872, in Zeitschr. d. deutsch. geol. Ges. XXIV. 525).]
1886J. W. Judd in Q. Jrnl. Geol. Soc. XLII. 54 There are distinct petrographical provinces, within which the rocks erupted during any particular geological period present certain well-marked peculiarities in mineralogical composition and microscopical structure, serving at once to distinguish them from the rocks belonging to the same general group, which were simultaneously erupted in other petrographical provinces. 1886F. Rutley in Ibid. XLII. 96 Lavas of totally distinct characters are poured out from the same vent, so that the use of the term ‘petrographic province’ seemed to be of rather doubtful propriety. 1910Lake & Rastall Text-bk. Geol. xiii. 230 The occurrence of chemical peculiarities running through all or nearly all the igneous rocks of a province shows that they are not all brought together by chance, but that there must be some real relationship between the different types. 1941Amer. Jrnl. Sci. CCXXXIX. 542 (heading) Compositions (less anorthite) of the salic portions of residual magmas in New Zealand petrographical provinces. 1954H. Williams et al. Petrography i. 10 The markedly potassic, leucitic lavas of the region around Rome and Naples..form a petrographic province. 1962P. T. Broneer tr. Beloussov's Basic Probl. in Geotectonics xxxii. 657 At first it was thought..that different geographic areas were characterized by the predominance of different magmas. This was the origin of the study of petrographic provinces.
c. In full now physiographic province. An extensive region all parts of which have a broadly similar geology and topography and which differs significantly from adjacent regions.
1893J. W. Powell in 14th Ann. Rep. U.S. Geol. Survey, 1892–3 i. 71 One of the results of this interpretation is the recognition of geologic provinces... The geologic province is the unit of past geography; throughout each the successive deposits represent a definite chronologic sequence, and throughout each there may generally be found definite, consistent, and mutually corroborative series of records of geologic events. 1895B. Willis Northern Appalachians (Nat. Geogr. Monogr. I. No. 6) 197 The plains were the homes of the most populous Indian tribes... The ranges of the mountains..were a barrier to intercourse long after the several topographic provinces had come under one national government. 1914Ann. Assoc. Amer. Geographers IV. 85 The confusion will be worse when the plotting of census and other statistics by physiographic provinces has become common. 1936Bull. Amer. Assoc. Petroleum Geologists XX. 1278 (caption) Outline map of Mexico showing principal physiographic provinces. Ibid. 1297 Although geologists and travellers subdivide the mountainous area of Chiapas into several sections, differing in their topographic and geologic aspects, nevertheless, their related and combined features can be taken as a whole to form one large province. 1974Physics Bull. Oct. 430/2 Another striking feature of the Mercurian surface is the asymmetry in distribution of the major physiographic provinces (also a characteristic of the moon and Mars).
†d. Soil Science. In full soil province. (See quots.) Obs.
1909Bull. Bureau of Soils (U.S. Dept. Agric.) No. 55. 26 The complete scheme of classification, so far as perfected by the Bureau of Soils, also provides for the grouping of these series..into thirteen great soil provinces, as shown in the map. 1913Ibid. No. 96. 7 A soil province is an area having the same general physiographic expression, in which the soils have been produced by the same forces or groups of forces and throughout which each rock or soil material yields to equal forces equal results. 1924F. E. Bear Soil Managem. iv. 30 Province refers to a large land area in which either the mode or the source of origin, or both, of the soil have been quite similar throughout. Thus the Glacial and Loessial Province of the Bureau of Soils includes the entire land area in the United States over which the glacial processes were most important in the formation of the original soil.
e. = oil province s.v. oil n.1 6 e.
1926[see oil province s.v. oil n.1 6 e]. 1933Bull. Amer. Assoc. Petroleum Geologists XVII. 1107 The earliest..trap to form in many American petroleum provinces was a reservoir rock which was wedged out and overlapped by an impervious cap rock. 1966McGraw-Hill Encycl. Sci. & Technol. X. 61/2 Underground occurrences of petroleum may be classified as pools, fields, and provinces. 1971Daily Tel. 29 Dec. 5/3 This huge oil yield from the northern ‘province’ of the North Sea will have important consequences for this country.
II.
7. The sphere of action of a person or body of persons; duty, office, business, function, department.
a1626Bacon Q. Eliz. Mor. & Hist. Wks. (Bohn) 480 This is not a subject for the pen of a monk, or any such cloistered writer... Certainly this is a province for men of the first rank. 1651Hobbes Leviath. xxii, This word province signifies a charge, or care of business, which he whose business it is, committeth to another man. 1702Clarendon's Hist. Reb. I. Pref. 2 It is a difficult Province to write the History of the Civil Wars of a great and powerful Nation. 1773Life N. Frowde 32, I rose softly, and dressed myself, a Province I was grown very alert at. 1775Sterne's Sent. Journ. III. 192 (The Story) My province was..to carry home the goods. 1776G. Semple Building in Water 149, I presume it is quite out of our Province. 1787Jefferson Writ. (1859) II. 103 It is neither in my province, nor in my power, to remedy them. 1806A. Hunter Culina (ed. 3) 262 The province of the cook, is to dress the meat according to the modern costume, and..to dish it up in an elegant manner. 1849Macaulay Hist. Eng. x. II. 657 James had invaded the province of the legislature. 1888M. Robertson Lombard St. Myst. xii, How he had secured an entrance..it is not our province to inquire.
III. fig. from I.
8. A department, division, or branch of learning, science, art, government, or any subject.
1690Locke Essay Hum. Und. iv. xx. 362 They seemed to me to be the three great Provinces of the intellectual World, wholly separate and distinct one from another. 1709Berkeley The. Vision §115 The two distinct provinces of sight and touch. 1710― Princ. Hum. Knowl. §101 The two great provinces of speculative science,..Natural Philosophy and Mathematics. 1756–82J. Warton Ess. Pope (ed. 4) II. xi. 262 He early left the more poetical provinces of his art, to become a moral, didactic and satiric poet. 1838–9Hallam Hist. Lit. IV. iv. vii. §8. 296 In the provinces of erudition and polite letters..some tendency towards a coalition began to appear. 1874Carpenter Ment. Phys. ii. xii. (1879) 505 In the provinces of æsthetics and Morals.
†9. Zool. and Bot. A sub-kingdom. Obs. rare.
1866Owen Anat. Vertebr. Anim. I. Pref. 9 Illustrations..will be found in the chapters on the Articulate Province and other parts of the ‘Lectures on Invertebrates’.
IV.
10. attrib. and Comb. Of, belonging or pertaining to a (or the) province, as province cost, province man, province seal, province store; province-line, see quot. 1809; province rose = Provins rose s.v. Provins or Provence rose s.v. Provence; also absol.; province-wide a., extending throughout or pertaining to a whole province.
1597Gerard Herball iii. i. 1802 The greate Rose..is generally called the greate Province Rose. 1629J. Parkinson Paradisi in Sole cix. 413 Some Gentlewomen have caused all their damaske stockes to be grafted with province Roses, hoping to have as good water, and more store of them. Ibid., The flowers are..of a sent not so sweete as the damaske Province. 1648B. Plantagenet Descr. New Albion 6 Having obtained under the Province Seal my grant of my Manor of Belvill. 1731P. Miller Gard. Dict. s.v. Rosa. The Damask, Province, and Frankfort Roses grow to the Height of seven or eight Feet. 1758L. Lyon in Milit. Jrnls. (1855) 14 There was a regiment of province men come up to Schenacata. 1758S. Thompson Diary (1896) 20 We eat supper and breakfast on Province cost. 1763J. Woolman Jrnl. (1840) 114 Going down the river to the province-store at Shaniokin. 1809Kendall Trav. III. 277 The bay itself..is intersected by what is called the province-line; that is, by the forty-fifth degree of north latitude, which is the southern boundary of Lower Canada. 1964P. Worsley in I. L. Horowitz New Sociol. 380 Government intervention in province-wide infrastructural fields, such as air-ways, bus-lines, insurance etc. 1977Belfast Tel. 22 Feb. 8/8 The old Loyalist merry-go-round of..province-wide protests and rallies for the converted are discarded. |