Jedburgh

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A historic market town in the Scottish Borders region of southeastern Scotland ; a member of a three-man Allied special operations team dropped behind enemy lines in occupied Europe
2. A small town in the Scottish Borders near the English border ; one of the Allied agents who parachuted into occupied France during the Second World War to aid resistance groups
3. A town in southeastern Scotland known for its abbey ruins ; a soldier from the Allied Jedburgh-style teams who organised and supported local resistance fighters in wartime Europe

Etymology: Jedburgh is a market town in the Scottish Borders, and its name in English dates back to the Middle Ages, when it was a royal burgh on the Jed Water. The word itself, as a noun for one of the wartime teams, owes its existence to a choice made by military planners rather than to any linguistic process. During the Second World War, Allied planners set up Operation Jedburgh to parachute three-man teams of British, American and French officers into occupied France to support the Resistance. The operation needed a codename, and the town was picked more or less at random from a list of place names. Nothing about the town's history or character connected it to the mission. That arbitrary choice is what gives the word its odd status: a Scottish place name that became, in military and historical usage, a label for a specific group of agents. Its meaning comes entirely from the operation rather than from anything the town itself was known for.