Etymology: < Old French cornage, ‘droit qui se levait sur les bêtes à cornes’, < corn, corne horn: in medieval Latin cornagium.For examples of medieval Latin cornagium compare:1183 Boldon Bk. in Domesday Bk. Supp. (1816) 568 Due ville redd. xxx. sol. de cornag' & ii. vacc' de metryde.1238–9 H. de Bracton Note Bk. (1887) No. 1270 Et preterea quia dedit cornagium quod anglice dicitur horn~gelde.c1290 Fleta iii. xiv. §9 Sunt etiam aliæ praestationes, ut auxilia in Comitatu Vice comitatum..Hydagia, Cornagia, Cariagia, Sectæ, etc. N.E.D. (1893) further comments: ‘The following erroneous explanation given by Littleton, as an ‘it is said’, has been repeated in the Law-books and Dictionaries down to the present time. It was perhaps founded on the passage from Bracton given above, in which there is mention both of a tenure by serjeanty, and of ‘cornage’ or horngeld.’1538 tr. T. Littleton Tenures (new ed.) ii. viii. f. 35v It is sayde, that in the marches of Scotlande, some holde of the kynge by cornage, that is to saye, to blowe an horne for to warne the men of the countreye, &c. whan they here that the Scottes or other ennemies wyll come or enter into Englande.1613 H. Finch Law (1636) 149. 1628 E. Coke 1st Pt. Inst. Lawes Eng. 107. 1641 Rastell's Termes de la Ley (new ed.) f. 85 1679 T. Blount Fragmenta Antiquitatis 13. 1767 W. Blackstone Comm. Laws Eng. (new ed.) II. 74 Tenure by cornage..was, to wind a horn when the Scots or other enemies entered the land.1804 W. Cruise Digest Laws Eng. Real Prop. III. 358. cornage has also been misread as coruage, coraage, and treated as a distinct word, with various conjectural explanations:c1250 H. de Bracton De Legibus Angliæ ii. xvi. 8 Quædam communes præstationes..sicut sunt Hidagia, Cornagia [1569 has coraagia: so Cowel, Blount, etc.], & Caruagia.1607 J. Cowell Interpreter sig. T1a Coraage..is a kinde of imposition extraordinarie..and it seemeth to be of certaine measures of corne.1656 in T. Blount Glossographia 1658 E. Phillips New World Eng. Words Coraage, in Common-law, is a certain extraordinary imposition upon certain measures of Corn, which is upon some unusual occasion.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1893; most recently modified version published online June 2022).
/ˈkɔːnɪdʒ/
n.1872