Midsomer

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A fictional rural English county that serves as the setting of a television detective series ; an old spelling of the time around the summer solstice
2. The imaginary English shire where a long-running television crime drama is set ; a former spelling of the middle of summer
3. A made-up county in southern England used as the backdrop for a popular detective show ; an obsolete form of the word for midsummer

Etymology: "Midsomer" is a northern English dialect form of "midsummer," the name for the period around the summer solstice, and it preserves a much older pronunciation. In Old English the word was "midsumor," from "midd" (middle) and "sumor" (summer), and the sense was the middle of the summer season, which the Church later tied to the feast of St John the Baptist on 24 June. Over centuries, the unstressed vowel in the second syllable weakened, and speakers in many regions shifted "sumor" toward "sum-mer," as in standard English today. In some parts of England, especially the north and the Midlands, the older vowel survived in ordinary speech and was written down as "midsomer" or "midsomer." The spelling was never standard, but it recorded real local pronunciation. It is most familiar to modern readers from the name of the fictional Midsomer County in the long-running television detective series, which borrowed the dialect spelling to suggest a rural English setting.