Ribble

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. A river in northwest England that rises in the Pennines and flows west to the Irish Sea near Preston
2. The river of Lancashire in northwest England, flowing from the Yorkshire Dales out to the Irish Sea
3. A waterway in northwest England that empties into the Irish Sea through an estuary near Southport

Etymology: The best-known "ribble" is the River Ribble, which flows through Lancashire and Yorkshire into the Irish Sea. Its name predates English in the region and is probably Brittonic, the Celtic language spoken there before the Anglo-Saxons arrived, but its exact meaning is uncertain, so any explanation of it is guesswork. The rarer sense is older and more practical. A ribble is a coarse comb with widely spaced teeth, used to separate the seed heads from flax stalks before the fibres were retted and spun. It is closely related to "ripple," which in the same sense meant a flax comb, and the two trace back to a Germanic word for comb, found in Old English and in Dutch "repel." The wave-like sense of "ripple" is a later development, probably from the way the teeth of a comb or a series of small ridges look.