Burnley

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A industrial town in the county of Lancashire in north-west England, known for its textile history and its football club
2. A place name referring to a market town in Lancashire, northern England, historically associated with cotton manufacturing
3. The name of a large town in north-west England within Lancashire, famous for its past textile mills and sporting traditions

Etymology: Burnley is a town in Lancashire, England, and its name is a compound of two Old English elements. The first, "Brun," is a river name that means "brown," the stream on which the settlement sits. The second, "lēah," meant a meadow or clearing, the open ground that a community carved out of woodland. Put together, the name describes a clearing beside the brown river. The pattern is common across England, where many place names combine a river or personal name with "lēah," which survives today as "-ley" or "-ly" in names such as Bradley and Cranleigh. Here the river name has outlasted the clearing: the stream gave the place its identity, and the meadow beside it gave the name its second half.