Yonkers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A large city in southeastern New York State, located just north of the Bronx along the Hudson River
2. A city in the southeastern part of New York State that lies on the Hudson River immediately north of New York City
3. Name of a populous municipality in New York State, situated on the eastern bank of the Hudson River next to the Bronx

Etymology: Yonkers is a plural only in form. The singular "yonker" is the word, and it entered English as a title for a young gentleman. The Dutch "jonkheer" combines "jong", meaning young, with "heer", meaning lord, so the sense is roughly "esquire". In New Netherland, the settlers' colonial record gave the title to Adriaen van der Donck, the region's first lawyer, who was known locally as the Jonkheer or Jonker. That local nickname is the root of the place name. The settlement and the land around it came to be called after him, so the town of Yonkers in New York takes its name from a man's honorific rather than from any geographic feature. The plural ending is simply the place name's own form, not a grammatical plural of a common noun.