Hillsborough

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A district of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England, known for its football stadium ; a county on the west coast of central Florida centred on Tampa ; a small village in County Down, Northern Ireland
2. A suburban area of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England, home to a famous football ground ; a large American county in west-central Florida that includes Tampa ; a rural village in County Down, Northern Ireland
3. A Sheffield neighbourhood in England, site of a well-known football stadium ; an administrative county in Florida, USA, whose main city is Tampa ; a village in the County Down area of Northern Ireland

Etymology: Hillsborough is a proper noun, and its name is simply a combination of two plain English elements: "hill" and "borough". The second element, "borough", is an Old English word for a fortified place or stronghold, which later came to mean a town with its own charter. The first, "hill", needs no explanation, so the name describes a settlement on or beside a hill, and it is typical of the many English-speaking places that took names of this kind. The name has travelled widely. The Florida county, which takes in Tampa, was named after the same English-derived name as the other places, and the village in New Brunswick, Canada, was probably named in honour of the British politician Wills Hill, 1st Marquess of Downshire (1718-1793). The rural village in County Down, Northern Ireland, which gives its name to the civil parish, belongs to the same family of place names, all built from the same two words.