Wimbledon

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A residential district in southwest London best known as the site of a famous lawn tennis tournament ; the major grass-court tennis championship played there every summer
2. An area of southwest London in the borough of Merton ; the prestigious annual grass-court tennis event staged at its All England Club each year
3. A leafy suburb of southwest London famed for hosting the sport's oldest major ; the annual grass-court lawn tennis contest staged there every summer

Etymology: Wimbledon is a place name before it is a tennis term. The area in south-west London was recorded in Old English times as a settlement on a hill, and its name combines a personal name with "dūn", meaning "hill". Scholars are not certain who the first element belongs to: it is probably a man called Wynnmann, though an alternative reconstruction, Wynebeald, has also been proposed. Either way, the name means something like "Wynnmann's hill". The tennis association came much later and simply borrowed the place name. The London suburb gave its name to the championships held there, so the tournament's name is a geographical label rather than a description of the sport. Over time the name of the hill came to stand for the event itself, and the word now refers to the tournament as much as to the district.