Foxhall

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small English village in the county of Suffolk, located near the town of Ipswich in East Anglia
2. The name of a rural settlement in Suffolk, England, situated in the countryside close to Ipswich
3. A place name referring to a village in eastern England within Suffolk, near the market town of Ipswich

Etymology: In Suffolk, Foxhall is a village whose name comes straight from Old English "foxhol", meaning "foxhole", or a fox's den. The name describes a place where foxes lived, much like many other English place-names built on animal dens and lairs. The name also appears in Scotland, at Foxhall in Kirkliston, West Lothian, where it is a calque from Cumbric, the Brittonic language once spoken in the north. A calque translates the parts of a name into another language rather than borrowing its sound, so the English form reproduces the sense of an older Cumbric name. A similar pattern is seen in the nearby place-name Carlowrie.