Marlow

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A market town in southern England located in Buckinghamshire on the River Thames
2. A historic town situated in Buckinghamshire, England, known for its riverside setting
3. A town in Buckinghamshire in southeast England, situated along the Thames valley

Etymology: Marlow is a proper noun, the name of an English town on the River Thames in Buckinghamshire, and its name is an ancient description of the landscape. It combines Old English "mere", meaning a lake or pool, with "hlǣw", meaning a mountain or hill. The first element survives in modern English as "mere" in words like "meander" and "mere" for a shallow lake. The second element, "hlǣw", is the same root that gave Old English the word for a burial mound, so the combination describes a hill rising above water. Place names built this way often outlast the landscape that inspired them. The name records a settlement that people chose to call by a feature they could see from the river, and the elements have stayed largely intact through the centuries of spelling change that reshaped the rest of the English vocabulary.