Rushmere

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A proper noun naming a small village in the county of Suffolk in eastern England
2. The name of a small rural village located in Suffolk, a county in the east of England
3. A place name referring to a little settlement in Suffolk, eastern England

Etymology: Rushmere is a compound built from two Old English words: "risc", meaning "rush" (the marsh plant), and "mere", meaning "lake" or pool. Together they describe a body of water fringed or filled with rushes, the kind of shallow, reedy pond that once dotted low-lying English landscapes. The second element, "mere", is the more telling one. It survives in English mostly in place names, where it marks a lake or pool, and it is the same word that gives many English settlements their names. Place names built this way often record a feature a settler noticed first, so "rushmere" most likely began as a description of a particular water body before it became a label for a locality.