Demesne or domain?
demesne is a noun meaning “A lord's chief manor place, with that part of the lands belonging thereto which…”; domain is a noun meaning “A geographic area owned or controlled by a single person or organization”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) domain is about 98 times as common as demesne.
What is the difference between demesne and domain?
| demesne | domain | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | noun |
| Meaning | A lord's chief manor place, with that part of the lands belonging thereto which has not been granted out in tenancy; a house, and the land adjoining, kept for… A region or area; a domain | A geographic area owned or controlled by a single person or organization A field or sphere of activity, influence or expertise |
| Example | none recorded | The king ruled his domain harshly |
| Forms | demesnes | domains |
| Pronunciation | /dɪˈmeɪn/ /dəˈmeɪn/ /dɪˈmiːn/ | /ˌdəʊˈmeɪ̯n/ /dəˈmeɪ̯n/ /ˌdoʊ̯ˈmeɪ̯n/ |
| In writing | about once in every 5 million words | 20 times per million words |
Sources: demesne and domain in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of demesne and domain
demesne
- 1
A lord's chief manor place, with that part of the lands belonging thereto which has not been granted out in tenancy; a house, and the land adjoining, kept for the proprietor's own use
- 2
A region or area; a domain
domain
- 1
A geographic area owned or controlled by a single person or organization
The king ruled his domain harshly
- 2
A field or sphere of activity, influence or expertise
Dealing with complaints isn't really my domain: get in touch with customer services
- 3
A group of related items, topics, or subjects
- 4
The set of input (argument) values for which a function is defined
- 5
The set A; The subset of A consisting of elements a of A such that there exists an element b in B with (a,b) in R
- 6
A ring with no zero divisors; that is, in which no product of nonzero elements is zero
- 7
An open and connected set in some topology. For example, the interval (0,1) as a subset of the real numbers
- 8
Any DNS domain name, particularly one which has been delegated and has become representative of the delegated domain name and its subdomains
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, demesne or domain?
demesne appears about once in every 5 million words; domain 20 times per million words.
demesne about once in every 5 million wordsdomain 20 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search demesne vs domain?
“demesne vs domain” is searched about 210 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“domain vs demesne”, “demesne or domain”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.