Ashmolean

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A prestigious art museum in Oxford, England, that holds a substantial collection of paintings, sculptures, and ancient artifacts
2. The University of Oxford's museum dedicated to displaying fine art, classical antiquities, and archaeological objects from around the world
3. A renowned Oxford institution housing artworks and historical objects, established to preserve and exhibit treasures of artistic and cultural significance

Etymology: Elias Ashmole was a seventeenth-century English antiquary, politician, astrologer and alchemist who collected curiosities of every sort: manuscripts, coins, rarities and natural specimens. In 1683 he gave his cabinet of these objects to the University of Oxford, and the collection became the basis of the museum that still bears his name. The word "Ashmolean" is simply his surname with the adjectival suffix "-an" attached, so it means "belonging to or associated with Ashmole." The word therefore began as a tribute, and it has kept that character. Almost everything it names is a building, a collection, or an institution that traces back to one man's gift. Its meaning rests entirely on the person behind it, so anyone who meets it for the first time is, in effect, being introduced to Ashmole himself.