Pendle

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A prominent hill in Lancashire, England, famous for its association with the 1612 witch trials
2. An upland landmark in northwest England, historically linked to a notorious seventeenth-century witchcraft prosecution
3. A hill rising above the Ribble valley in Lancashire, best known for the witch trials recorded there in 1612

Etymology: Pendle is the name of a prominent hill in Lancashire, England, and its name is a hybrid of two languages spoken on the island of Britain over a thousand years ago. The first element comes from Proto-Brythonic "penn", meaning "head" or "top", the ancestor of the Welsh word "pen" and the Cornish "pen" that still carry the same sense. The second element is Old English "hyll", meaning "hill". The name therefore means something like "head hill" or "top hill", with the English word added to a British Celtic root that had been used for the same idea. Such doubled place names are common in Britain, where later speakers of English often kept an older local term and attached their own word for the feature, without realising the first part already meant "hill". The result is a name that repeats the same idea in two tongues.