Exmoor

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A large area of upland moorland and hills straddling Somerset and Devon in southwest England, designated a national park
2. A protected national park of heather-covered moors, steep valleys and coastline in the English counties of Somerset and Devon
3. An upland region of open moorland and rugged coast in southwest England, known for its red deer and wild landscape

Etymology: Exmoor is a name built from two English elements that describe the landscape itself. The first part, "Ex", is the river name: the River Exe rises on these uplands, and the word preserves an older name for that river. The second part is the Old English "mōr", meaning moor, an open tract of rough, often boggy high ground. Put together, the name means something like "the moor where the Exe rises." The pairing is a common pattern in English place-naming, where a river name is combined with a generic landscape term to label the district around a river's source. The name therefore records a plain fact of geography rather than a legend or a person, and its meaning has stayed fixed since it was coined.