vicinage

From Old French visnage, respelled to more closer match its Latin source vīcīnus (“neighbor”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈvɪsɪnɪdʒ/

vicinage (plural vicinages)

1. (now rare) A surrounding district; a neighbourhood.
   • 1848, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: an Autobiography‎, London: Smith, Elder, and Co. Cornhill, page 263:

     It was as still as a church on a week-day: the pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound audible in its vicinage.

2. (now rare) The people of a neighbourhood.
3. The state of living near something; proximity, closeness.
   • 1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country‎, New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, page 7:

     In the few years that she had lived here, a stranger herself, in some sort—not accustomed, as was her husband, to a lifelong vicinage to the pygmy burial-ground—she had developed no receptivity to that uncanny idea of a race of dwarfs.

4. (Britain, US, law) The area where a crime was committed, a trial is being held, or the community from which jurors are drawn.
5. (New Jersey, law) A geographical division of the w:New Jersey Superior Court, covering one or more counties, for judicial administration and the assignment of venue to an action within the Superior Court

• vicinity
• vicinal