Shire
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Shire. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a geographical division common in England, corresponding roughly to the American county. Originally some of the English shires were the territory of the different tribes, petty kingdoms in short. As examples of these Kent, Essex, Surrey, Norfolk, and Suffolk may be named. Others, as Yorkshire, Durham, Cheshire, and Worcester, were the territory of ancient bishoprics. Still others are artificial divisions formed at later times. The earlier shires, after the petty kingdom period, were under the civic, military, or judicial headship of ealdormen or earls. Twice a year a shire-moot, that is to say, a court or assembly, was held which might be presided over by the earl or the bishop. Ultimately much of the authority exercised by the earls, bishops, and shire-moot was merged in the sovereign and in the Parliament of the kingdom, and the shire became merely the administrative division it is at present. The term sheriff or shire-reeve owes its origin to shire, the sheriff being the chief officer, uniting judicial with executive functions.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in the United States, a division of a State, comprising several contiguous townships-a distinction must be drawn between the application of this word as between English and American usage; as, for instance, it is correct in the United States to say "the county of Berkshire"; whereas in England such an expression would be tautological, or, in other words, would convey the sense of "a county of a county." SHIRÉ, a river of southeastern Africa draining Lake Nyassa into the Zambesi, which it enters on its left bank after a course of about 270 miles nearly due S. It is navigable throughout its entire length, with the exception of about 35 miles of falls and rapids, during the course of which it descends as much as 1,200 feet.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 note that the shire had become "merely the administrative division it is at present" understated how much redrawing was still to come: the Local Government Act 1972, effective in 1974, abolished the ancient counties of Middlesex, Huntingdonshire and Rutland (Rutland was restored as a unitary authority in 1997) and invented short-lived ones such as Avon, Cleveland and Humberside, scrapped in 1996. The sheriff, whose title Aiton correctly traces to shire-reeve, survives in England only as the largely ceremonial High Sheriff, appointed annually, with the judicial and executive powers long since gone. Collier's Shiré River still drains the lake it describes, but Lake Nyassa has been Lake Malawi since the country's independence in 1964, and the falls and rapids that blocked navigation now carry a chain of hydroelectric stations at Nkula, Tedzani and Kapichira that generate most of Malawi's electricity. One thing neither editor could have foreseen: for most English speakers today "the Shire" first calls up Tolkien's hobbits, from The Lord of the Rings (1954-55).
Written for this edition, 2026.