Wembley

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A suburban district in the north-west of London, famous for the national football stadium that bears its name
2. A locality in north-west London that is best known as the home of a large national sports stadium
3. The north-western London area associated with a famous football ground and major concerts held there

Etymology: Wembley is a place name, and its history lies entirely in its parts. It comes from an Old English personal name, reconstructed as "Wemba", combined with "lēah", meaning a clearing in a forest or a meadow. The name therefore records someone called Wemba who held or was associated with an open patch of land carved out of woodland, a common pattern for English settlement names. The second element is the more familiar one. "Lēah" survives in modern English as "lea" and "ley", a poetic word for meadow, and it appears in countless place names across England. Many such names were given to farmsteads and villages during the Anglo-Saxon period, so "Wembley" belongs to a large family of settlements whose names describe the landscape around them. The name itself is the only record of Wemba, since the personal name is known only from its reconstruction. Like many English place names, the word now refers to a locality, and it is far better known today for the stadium and district that bear it.