disafforest

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   in English law, to remove land's legal status as a royal forest and release it from forest law

   The charter disafforested the tract and returned it to the ordinary law of the county.

2. 2
   verb

   rarely, to clear a tract of its trees; to deforest

   Repeated cutting disafforested much of the hillside before conservation began.

From Middle English disafforeten and Anglo-Norman disaforester, ultimately Medieval Latin disafforestare, formed from dis- + afforest. Its precise historical sense was legal: to take land out of royal-forest jurisdiction. The broader tree-clearing sense developed by association with deforest.

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