Downshire

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An older name for County Down, a county in the province of Ulster in Northern Ireland
2. The historical title used for County Down, a region on the eastern coast of Northern Ireland
3. A former designation for the Northern Irish county of Down, associated with the Hillsborough area

Etymology: In Ireland, the county now usually called County Down was known in English as Downshire, a name built from two parts. "Down" comes from Irish "dún", meaning a fort or fortified hill, and "shire" comes from Old English "scīr", a term for an administrative district. English speakers combined the two when they applied their own system of counties to an Irish place name. The English word "shire" once meant "care" or "office" before it came to mean a territorial division, so the name carries a trace of that older sense of responsibility. Because the title was a common way to name a county in English, the Marquess of Downshire took his title from the county, and the name lingered in the aristocratic titles of the region.