A shire is a traditional term for a division of land, found in the United Kingdom and some other English speaking countries. It was first used in Wessex from the beginning of Anglo-Saxon settlement, and spread to most of the rest of England in the tenth century. In some rural parts of Australia, a shire is a local government area; however, in Australia it is not synonymous with a "county", which is a lands administrative division. 

The word derives from the Old English "scir", itself a derivative of the Proto-Germanic "skizo" (cf. Old High German "scira"), meaning care or official charge. In the UK, "shire" is the original term for what is usually known now as a "county"; the word "county" having been introduced at the Norman Conquest of England. The two are nearly synonymous. Although in modern British usage counties are referred to as "shires" mainly in poetic contexts, terms such as Shire Hall remain common. Shire also remains a common part of many county names. 

In regions with so-called rhotic pronunciation such as Scotland, the word "shire" is pronounced or . In non-rhotic areas the final R is silent unless the next word begins in a vowel. When "shire" is a suffix as part of a placename in England, the vowel is unstressed and thus usually shortened and/or monophthongised: pronunciations include , or sometimes , with the pronunciation of the final R again depending on rhoticity. In many words, the vowel is normally reduced all the way to a single schwa, as in for instance "Leicestershire" or "Berkshire" . Outside England, and especially in Scotland and the US, it is more common for "shire" as part of a placename to be pronounced identically to the full word, as a result of spelling pronunciation.
When?
 the beginning of Anglo-Saxon settlement