Emily Dickinson Lexicon

PE-CUL-IAR, n.

1. Exclusive property; that which belongs to a person in exclusion of others. – Milton.
2. In the canon law, a particular parish or church which has the probate of wills within itself, exempt from the jurisdiction of the ordinary or bishop's court. – Encyc. Court of peculiars, in England, is a branch of the court of arches. It has jurisdiction over all the parishes dispersed through the province of Canterbury, in the midst of other dioceses, which are exempt from the ordinary jurisdiction, and subject to the metropolitan only. Blackstone.