Sidgwick

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Nineteenth-century English philosopher and ethicist known for his influential work on utilitarianism and The Methods of Ethics
2. A British moral philosopher of the late 1800s who wrote a famous systematic study of ethical theory and utilitarian reasoning
3. Victorian English thinker who taught at Cambridge and produced a landmark treatise on the methods of moral philosophy

Etymology: Sidgwick is a surname before it is anything else: it comes from Sidgwick, a village in West Yorkshire, and the name was carried by the Victorian philosopher Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900), author of "The Methods of Ethics" (1874). The word as a noun in its own right is essentially a proper noun, and its usage is tied to people and places bearing the name rather than to a common-vocabulary sense. The place name itself is English in origin. It is built from Old English elements, most plausibly an Old English personal or descriptive element combined with "wic," meaning a dwelling, farm or settlement, a common ending in English place names. The village is recorded under forms of this name in medieval documents, so the name is old, long predating the Victorian bearers who made it familiar to philosophy readers. Because the word is a surname and place name, its etymology is that of the village rather than of a general English term. Readers encountering it in an academic setting most often mean the philosopher, and the name's meaning in ordinary speech is simply the family and locality it denotes.