Bronte

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The family name of the English novelists Charlotte, Emily and Anne Victorian sisters famed for Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights ; a town on the slopes of Mount Etna in eastern Sicily
2. A surname shared by the 19th-century English writing sisters who produced Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights ; a small Sicilian town lying in the foothills of Mount Etna
3. The surname of a famous family of Victorian English novelists whose works include Jane Eyre ; the name of a municipality on the eastern side of the island of Sicily

Etymology: In Ancient Greek, "brontē" simply meant thunder, the rumble that follows lightning. The same root produced "Brontēs," the name of one of the Cyclopes, the one-eyed smiths who were said to forge Zeus's thunderbolts. The sound and its maker were thus bound together in a single name. English took the word from Greek as a learned term, so it belongs to specialist vocabulary rather than everyday speech. Its best-known bearer is a family name. Patrick Brontë, father of the novelists Charlotte, Emily and Anne, likely adopted the form of his surname that he used, and the title Duke of Bronte, granted to Horatio Nelson, is commonly linked to that choice.