#vicinage

Noun

[vis-uh-nij ]

1. a particular neighborhood or district, or the people belonging to it.

Origin:
Vicinage “a particular neighborhood or district” is a fusion of the Latin adjective vīcīnus “nearby” and the English suffix -age, which forms nouns from other parts of speech. Vīcīnus derives from the noun vīcus “village, hamlet,” which is the source of the suffixes -wich and -wick in English place names, such as Greenwich and Brunswick, and comes from the Indo-European root weik- “clan” or “settlement.” This same root is the source of villa, from the Latin word for “country house,” and the Ancient Greek noun oikos “home,” which gives English ecology,economy,parochial, and parish.

“The Island of Mackinac has a circumference of about nine miles, and its shores and vicinage are picturesque and romantic in the highest degree.”
- T. ADDISON RICHARDS, APPLETONS’ ILLUSTRATED HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN TRAVEL, 1857