Definition of "wapentake" []

• A historical subdivision of some northern counties in England, corresponding roughly to the hundred in other shires. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "As you seem to have intuited from your own research on your site, the exact meaning of wapentake is a little obscure."
• "I remember seeing Tolkien use it in a military context, leading me to say, "Oh! He assumes wapentake is a kind of war counsel.""
• "The people, in imitation of their ancestors, the ancient Germans, assembled there in arms; whence a hundred was sometimes called a wapentake, and its courts served both for the support of military discipline and for the administration of civil justice. ["