Colchester

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A historic market town in the county of Essex in eastern England, often regarded as one of the oldest recorded towns in Britain
2. An ancient English town in the county of Essex, situated on the River Colne and known for its Roman heritage
3. A town in eastern England's Essex county that was an important Roman settlement and later a major centre of trade

Etymology: The town takes its name from the River Colne, whose own name is older than English itself. "Colne" comes from a Celtic word for the river, and the Anglo-Saxons who settled the area kept it. What they added was "ceaster," an Old English word for a Roman town, a borrowing from the Latin "castra," meaning fortified camp. So Colchester is, in effect, "the Roman fort on the Colne," with the Roman settlement recorded under the Anglo-Saxon name Colneċeaster. The pattern is a neat record of successive occupations. A Celtic-speaking population named the river, the Romans built a major settlement beside it, and the Anglo-Saxons, arriving centuries later, looked at the ruins and named the place by what they saw there. Their word "ceaster" survives in other English place names, such as Chester and Cirencester, which share the same Roman-era origin.