Desmond

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A male personal name of Irish origin, traditionally associated with Irish and English-speaking cultures
2. A masculine given name derived from the Irish place name Desmond, historically used across Ireland and Britain
3. A male forename with Irish roots, commonly bestowed as a personal name in English-speaking countries

Etymology: The word here is a clipped form, and the thing it clips is a famous name. "Desmond" in this sense is a shortened way of saying "Desmond Tutu," the South African archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and it became a slang term for the number 2.2 in British university grading, where a "two-two" is the lower second-class degree. The link runs through sound: "Tutu" was used as a surname, and its pronunciation was heard as a match for "two-two," which made the archbishop's name a convenient stand-in for the grade. Using a person's name as a code for a number is a playful substitution, and the joke depends entirely on the homophone rather than on anything in the archbishop's own life or work. The form is a straightforward abbreviation, so it needs no further explanation beyond the chain of association that connects the given name, the surname, and the grade.