Noun
tithing (plural tithings)
- A tithe or tenth in its various senses, (particularly):
- The tithe given as an offering to the church.
1998, Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents, HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP (2019), page 294:I prayed for the sick and saw some of them healed under my hands. I was given tithings of money and food by people who had not enough to eat themselves.
- The payment of tithes.
- The collection of tithes.
- (dialectal) Ten sheaves of wheat (originally set up as such for the tithe proctor).
1934, Dylan Thomas, “I see the boys of summer”, in 18 Poems, London: The Fortune Press:I see the boys of summer in their ruin / Lay the gold tithings barren, / Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils
- (historical, law) A body of households (originally a tenth of a hundred or ten households) bound by frankpledge to collective responsibility and punishment for each other's behavior.
- (historical, law) A part of the hundred as a rural division of territory.
Derived terms
- tithing-barn
- tithing days
- tithingman, tithing-man
- tithing-penny
- tithing port
- tithing-sheaf
- tithing-system
- tithing table
- tithing-time
See also
- (oath-bound division of the hundred, adj.): decenary
- (oath-bound division of the hundred, leader): See tithingman
- (oath-bound division of the hundred, member): See decenary
References
Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "tithing, n.1" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1912.
Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "tithing, n.2" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1912.