Lyndhurst

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A village in Hampshire, England, set within the New Forest ; a town in New Jersey in the United States ; an English surname, also borne by a noted nineteenth-century lord chancellor
2. A small English village in the New Forest area of Hampshire ; a borough in northeastern New Jersey ; a family name that belonged to a famous British judge and politician
3. The name of a Hampshire village near the New Forest ; the name of a New Jersey town ; a surname and peerage title associated with a former lord chancellor of Britain

Etymology: Lyndhurst is a place name before it is anything else, and its parts are plain English. "Lind" was the Old English word for the lime tree, and "hyrst" meant a wooded hill or a grove of trees, so the name describes a wooded rise where limes grew. Many English towns and estates carry names built this way, and the word is best understood as a description of a landscape rather than a coinage. The name is found in several places, most famously Lyndhurst in the New Forest of Hampshire, where the village grew up around the old royal hunting lodge. The same pattern shows up in other English place names, which is why the word has a lived-in, countryside feel: the trees gave the land its name long before anyone thought of the place as a town.