Definition
The ceremonial act by which the British sovereign selects sheriffs for the counties of England and Wales. On a day appointed for the purpose, a list of nominated candidates is presented to the sovereign, who marks the chosen name with a pin or bodkin — a practice giving rise to the term. The sheriff selected by this process is said to have been "pricked" for the office. Pricking for sheriffs is among the oldest surviving royal prerogatives exercised in person by the Crown and reflects the historical character of the shrievalty as a royal appointment rather than an elective or purely administrative one.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle and gerund of "prick"; the act of piercing or puncturing with a sharp point.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of piercing or puncturing with a sharp point; also the driving of a nail into a horse's foot; a pricking sensation; tracing a hare by its footmarks; dressing oneself for show.
The legal meaning is not metaphorical — it is literal. The sovereign physically punctures or marks a name with a pointed instrument. But the legal significance is entirely constitutional and ceremonial: the act of pricking is the formal exercise of royal prerogative to appoint a sheriff. A researcher encountering "pricking" in a legal or historical source must recognize that the word carries a precise procedural and constitutional meaning far beyond its ordinary physical sense.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in English constitutional history, the law of local government, or the history of royal prerogative will encounter "pricking" in sources spanning several centuries. The term appears consistently in records relating to the shrievalty — the office of sheriff — and its appearance signals a distinct cluster of constitutional issues: the scope of royal appointment power, the nature of the shrievalty as a Crown office, and the historical relationship between central and local authority in England.
The term is essentially England-specific and does not translate to American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions in any operative legal sense. Researchers using American legal sources, including later editions of Black's Law Dictionary, may find the entry sparse or absent; the concept simply has no American counterpart because the shrievalty in the United States became an elective office under state constitutions.
The Black's 2nd Edition source material as supplied is fragmentary and does not yield a clean definition of pricking itself — the surrounding text addresses the Habitual Criminals Act and penalties on lodging-house keepers, suggesting the entry may have been excerpted from a broader discussion of sheriffs rather than a standalone definition. Researchers should treat this with caution and consult primary English sources and constitutional histories for authoritative treatment.
Historical Dictionary Support
The Black's 2nd Edition material provided does not contain a substantive definition of "pricking" as such. The surrounding text concerns English penal legislation and the duties of sheriffs generally, which places pricking in its correct institutional context — the shrievalty — but does not define the ceremony. This is a meaningful gap. Historical English legal dictionaries, including Tomlin's Law Dictionary and Jacob's Law Dictionary, treat pricking for sheriffs as a recognized term of art describing the sovereign's method of selection, and those sources should be preferred for a complete historical definition.
Webster's 1913, while not a legal source, confirms that "pricking" carried a literal, physical meaning (puncturing with a point) that maps directly onto the ceremonial act. The legal usage is not a figurative extension — it describes exactly what was done: a physical mark made with a pointed instrument on a list of names.
Jurisdictional Note
Pricking is a term of English constitutional law with no operative equivalent in American, Canadian, or Australian law. In those jurisdictions, sheriffs are either elected or appointed by different mechanisms, and the term will not appear in domestic legal sources in any functional sense. Researchers focused on English law should note that the ceremony continues in modified form into the modern era.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Shrievalty; Royal Prerogative.