A shire is a rural county or region, especially in England. The word comes from Old English and originally meant a district governed by a royal official. If you've heard of Yorkshire, Devonshire, or Nottinghamshire, you're hearing this old word tucked onto the end of county names.

Shires are typically countryside areas with rolling hills, farms, and small villages rather than big cities. When Bilbo Baggins lives in the Shire in The Hobbit, Tolkien created a fictional place that captured the feeling of peaceful English countryside life: green fields, cozy homes, and quiet rural communities.

In medieval England, each shire had a shire reeve who kept the peace and collected taxes for the king. Today, many English counties still officially carry the shire designation, though people may drop it in everyday conversation. Someone might say they're from “Oxford” when they technically live in Oxfordshire.

The word sometimes appears in fantasy books and historical novels because it evokes that sense of traditional, pastoral English country life, where people know their neighbors and life moves at a gentler pace than in bustling cities.