Stonyhurst

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A Jesuit boarding school near Clitheroe in Lancashire, England ; the small village in Lancashire where that famous college is situated
2. An independent Catholic school run by Jesuits in Lancashire, England ; the rural settlement in the Ribble Valley that gives the school its name
3. A renowned Jesuit college located in the English county of Lancashire ; a quiet village in the same northwestern English region

Etymology: Stonyhurst is a village in Lancashire, England, and the name is simply descriptive. It combines "stony," from Old English "stānig," with "hurst," an Old English word for a wooded hill or copse. Together they describe a rocky, wooded rise, and English place names built on "-hurst" are common across the country. The name is best known today through Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit school whose founders took the village's name when the institution settled there. The school's own history, which began abroad before it came to Lancashire, is what gives the place its wider fame. The village name itself, though, is a plain piece of English landscape description, not a coinage or a borrowing.