Cloyne

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small village in County Cork, Ireland, known for its historic cathedral ; the church district whose bishop oversees the parishes around that village
2. A small settlement in southern Ireland, County Cork, home to an old cathedral ; an ecclesiastical diocese centred on that cathedral and governed by its bishop
3. A village in the Irish county of Cork that gives its name to a historic church area ; a bishopric whose seat is located in that village and its cathedral

Etymology: Cloyne is not a word in its own right so much as an old spelling of "clown." Before the word meant a comic performer, it described a man of rustic or coarse manners, a boor or peasant. Writers used "cloyne" and "clowne" interchangeably for that sense, so the Irish village's name and the modern noun look identical only because of an accident of spelling. The origin of that older sense is uncertain. The likeliest source is a family of North Germanic and Low German words for a clumsy fellow or klutz, such as Icelandic "klunni," Swedish "kluns," and Dutch "kluns." These trace back to Middle Low German "klunz," probably related to a word meaning a lump or thick pile. The traditional idea that the word came from Latin "colonus," meaning colonist or farmer, is generally rejected, though the resemblance may have shaped how people understood the rustic sense.