Leominster

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A town in the West Midlands region of England, located in the county of Herefordshire, historically known for its carpet and leather industries
2. A market town in Herefordshire, England, situated in the Welsh Marches near the border with Wales and traditionally famous for manufacturing textiles
3. A historic English town in Herefordshire notable for its priory and its long-standing role as a regional commercial and industrial centre

Etymology: Leominster is a place name rather than a common word, and its name records an Anglo-Saxon monastery. Its Old English form, "Lēomynster", combines a region name, "Lēon", with "mynster", the Old English word for a monastery, so the town's name literally means "the monastery of the Lēon region." The "mynster" element is the same root that gives English "minster", a church attached to a monastery or one that has grown important, and it was borrowed into Old English from Latin "monasterium" long before the Norman period. The first part, "Lēon", was the name of a district in the area of the Welsh border in Herefordshire, and the town took its name from it. Over the centuries the Old English form softened into Middle English "Lemynster" and "Lemyster", and the spelling settled into the modern "Leominster" while the pronunciation drifted toward "LEM-ster", so the spelling now hides the older vowel of the first syllable.