Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Bailiwick

"That's not my bailiwick" is something my mother used to say, and I'll admit that this statement pops to mind on occasion (although these days one is more likely to hear "not in my wheelhouse"). So, what is a bailiwick anyway? I truly have no idea. So, let's subject it to the Slang-o-rama microscope!

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The Online Etymology Dictionary is always a good place to start. And yep, here's what they say about the noun bailiwick:

mid-15c., "district of a bailiff, jurisdiction of a royal officer or under-sheriff," a contraction of baillifwik, from bailiff (q.v.) + Middle English wik, from Old English wic "village"... The figurative sense of "one's natural or proper sphere" is by 1843.

I checked my hardcopy of The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology by Robert K. Barnhart, which says pretty much the same thing, with 1843 being its first appearance (in the figurative sense) in "American English." Vocabulary.com offers a bit more detail for definitions and so on:

A bailiwick is an area of knowledge in which a person or institution has control or expertise — as in "My bailiwick is international relations." There is a faintly old-fashioned, even pedantic air to the term now, so use with caution.

Bailiwick also can mean a geographical area over which someone or some body has legal or political control, though this is a less common meaning nowadays... Britain's central criminal court, the famous Old Bailey, is so named because it lay on the ancient bailey or wall that defined the original City of London.

If you want to do a deep dive into the non-idiomatic origin and use of this word, check out this Wikipedia entry which even includes a list of existing geographical bailiwicks. But hey, since this particular entry doesn't offer a dive into the slang aspects, it's not in my bailiwick....

The Bailiwick of Guernsey? Not what we're looking at here in Slang-o-rama.
Bailiwick of Jersey flag: CC BY-SA 3.0, Link      Hand image: RegioTV from Pixabay