mastership

noun

Etymology: From Middle English masterchippe, maisterschipe, equivalent to master + -ship. Compare Dutch meesterschap, German Meisterschaft.

1. The state or office of a master.

   “[...] wee haue one in heauen who is maister of vs all, as sainct Paule sayeth: there will be no accepting of persons, there shall bee no more bondage or mastershippe for men too alleage before God.”

   “A Repentant Sinner is the Child of Grace, who being borne for the seruice of God, makes no reckoning of the mastershippe of the world [...]”

2. Mastery: dominion, superiority, control.

   “[...] you may begin to dig your ground in the beginning, so all along Winter till the very day of setting, and then you must keep it with weeding and hoing till it have got the mastership of the weeds and then it being a weed of it self wil destroy all other.”

   “Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas! Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems!”

3. Mastery: superior skill.

   “Where is your ancient courage? you were used To say extremity was the trier of spirits; That common chances common men could bear; That when the sea was calm all boats alike Show’d mastership in floating [...]”

   “Some swallow every thing whole and unmix’d; so that it may rather be call’d a Heap, than a Pudding. Others are so Squeamish, the greatest Mastership in Cookery is requir’d to make the Pudding Palatable [...]”

4. Chief work; masterpiece.
5. A title of respect, sometimes ironic.

   “c. 1531, John Frith, A Disputacion of Purgatorye, Antwerp: S. Cock, Book 2, Thus hath Master More a full a[n]swere both to his scriptures which were to farre wrested out of their places and also to his awne apparent reasons. How be it if his mastershippe be not fullye pacyfyed let him more groundlye open his minde and bringe for his purposse all that he thinketh to make for it and I shall by goddes grace shortlye make him an answere and guyet his minde.”

   “How now, Signior Launce! what news with your mastership?”