Donegal

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A county in the northwest of the Republic of Ireland ; a flecked, hard-wearing woollen tweed originally woven in that county
2. A rugged county on Ireland's northwestern coast ; a thick woollen cloth with small coloured flecks first produced in that region
3. The northwestern Irish county known for its coastline ; a heavy tweed fabric with distinctive colourful slubs first made in that area

Etymology: Donegal is the northwestern-most county of Ireland, and its name is an anglicization of the Irish "Dún na nGall", which translates literally as "fort of the foreigners or strangers". The Irish word "gall" referred to foreigners, and the name points back to a fortified site where those outsiders were based or where they were kept at a distance from the native population. The English spelling "Donegal" is therefore a phonetic rendering of the Irish place name, with the Irish "Dún" becoming "Don" and "na nGall" becoming "egal" in English speech. The name has been carried over unchanged into the English-language map, so the outsiders named in it have long since been absorbed into the place they were once set apart from.