Teviot

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A river flowing through the Scottish Borders region of southern Scotland before joining the Tweed
2. The Teviot is a watercourse in the Scottish Borders that rises in the hills and runs eastward to the River Tweed
3. A Scottish river in the Borders area, a tributary that drains into the Tweed near Kelso

Etymology: The Teviot is a river in the Scottish Borders, and its name is Gaelic in origin. It comes from "abhainn Tìbhiot", meaning "river Tìbhiot", where "abhainn" is the Gaelic word for river. The name thus repeats its own noun: the English "river Teviot" preserves that same redundancy in a different language. The name itself is probably very old. Its root is thought to be the same as that of the Thames, so the Teviot and the great London river may share a distant ancestry, a pairing that shows how river names often outlast the peoples who first spoke them. Scholars have not reached certainty on the exact sense of the root, so the precise original meaning of "Tìbhiot" remains unclear.