Stockport

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A town in the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport within Greater Manchester in north-west England, known for its railway viaduct and market
2. An urban settlement in north-western England, located in Greater Manchester and situated south-east of the city of Manchester
3. A large town in the north-west of England forming part of the Greater Manchester conurbation, with a long industrial and commercial history

Etymology: Stockport is a town in Greater Manchester, and its name is simply two Old English elements put together: "stoc", meaning a dwelling or place, and "port", meaning a market town. The second element was not a harbour in the modern sense. In Anglo-Saxon England a "port" was a town with the right to hold a market, so the name reads roughly as "market-place at the stoc," with the first part describing the settlement that grew up there. The "stoc" element is one of the most common in English place names. It appears in many forms across England, usually marking an outlying or secondary settlement, and it survives in words such as "stockade" only in the sense of a fenced enclosure. In Stockport's case the name records a dwelling site that developed into a trading centre, with the market giving the town its identity.