Northanger

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The fictional old abbey estate that serves as the setting of Jane Austen's novel about the young heroine Catherine Morland
2. A place name for the gothic-style abbey home in Jane Austen's 1817 novel, where much of the story's mystery unfolds
3. The imagined medieval abbey and country property at the center of a Jane Austen novel that parodies gothic fiction

Etymology: Northanger is a proper noun, the name of the Gothic-tinged abbey in Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey," published posthumously in 1817, though written in the 1790s. Austen gave it no etymology in the novel, so the name's meaning rests on its parts. "Northanger" is an English place-name type built from "north" and "anger," where "anger" is an old word for a meadow or a strip of grassland beside a river or hill, related to the Old English "anger" and to the same root as "anchor"-era words for a narrow tract of land. In the north of England and Scotland, such names often combine a compass direction with this element to describe a field's position relative to a settlement. Austen's choice has a playful edge. The name sounds sternly northern and slightly forbidding, which suits the abbey's shadowy reputation in the novel, even though the real Northanger is a plain country house in Gloucestershire, not a medieval ruin.