Origin and history of Devon

usually in plural, Stannaries, the name of a district of tin mines and smelting works in Cornwall and Devon, mid-15c., ultimately...The courts and the jail for it in Devon were at Lydford, hence: Lydford law: is to hang men first, and indite them afterwards...

city in Devon, England, named for its location at the mouth of the Plym River; the river is in turn named for Plympton, literally...

The personal name that became common in Devon and Cornwall and the Breton districts of Yorkshire and the Eastern Counties...

Father Christmas is attested in a carol attributed to Richard Smart, Rector of Plymtree (Devon) from 1435-77....

But Wright's "English Dialect Dictionary" (1900) reports Gallithumpians as a Dorset and Devon word from 1790s for a society...

Compare earlier Lydford law, from the place in Devon, a seat of the old notorious Stannaries Courts, "that hanged a man in...

Old English Engla land, literally "the land of the Angles" (see English (n.1)), used alongside Angelcynn "the English race," which, with other forms, shows Anglo-Saxon persistence in thinking in terms of tribes rather than place. By late Old English times both words had come to b

mid-13c., "property" of any kind, including money, land, or income; from Anglo-French catel "property" (Old North French catel, Old French chatel), from Medieval Latin capitale "property, stock," noun use of neuter of Latin adjective capitalis "principal, chief," literally "of th

archaic plural of cow (n.); a double plural (compare children) or genitive plural of Middle English kye "cows," from Old English cy (genitive cyna), plural of cu "cow." The old theory that it represents a contraction of Old English cowen is long discarded. The Old Testament kine

Greek goddess of victory (identified by the Romans with their Victoria), literally "victory, upper hand" (in battle, in contests, in court), probably connected with neikos "quarrel, strife," neikein "to quarrel with," a word of uncertain etymology and perhaps a pre-Greek word. As