Wooster

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A town in northeastern Ohio in the United States ; a fictional upper-class English gentleman in the comic novels of P. G. Wodehouse
2. A city located in Ohio, USA ; an amiable, bumbling young aristocrat created by author P. G. Wodehouse
3. A midwestern American city in Ohio ; a feckless, good-natured character from Wodehouse's humorous English stories

Etymology: Wooster, Ohio, is named after Worcester in England, and the word has a second life as the surname of a fictional aristocrat. The town's name is a transplant: early American settlers borrowed the English city's name, and the spelling shifted in the process, so the American form now looks like a separate word. The famous Wooster is Bertie Wooster, the amiable, bumbling young gentleman created by P. G. Wodehouse, whose valet Jeeves rescues him from one scrape after another. Wodehouse's use of the name has largely eclipsed the English city in the minds of many readers, so the same spelling now points to a character far more often than to a place.