England - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

England

England

England

National flag of England

Location of England in Europe

Proto-West Germanic *land

English England

From Middle English Engelond, England, from Old English Engla land (literally “land of the Angles”), from genitive of Engle (“the Angles”) + land (“land”).

England (usually uncountable, plural Englands)

  1. The largest and most populous constituent country of the United Kingdom; established in southern Britain by Aethelstan of Wessex in 927.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:England
    Holonyms: Great Britain, Britain < United Kingdom, UK < Earth, World
    We thoroughly enjoyed our vacation in Britain. We visited England, Wales, and Scotland.
    • 1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:
      Gaunt ...This royall throne of Kings, this sceptred Ile,
      This earth of maiesty, this seate of Mars,
      This other Eden, demy Paradice,
      This fortresse built by Nature for her selfe,
      Against infection and the hand of warre,
      This happy breede of men, this little world,
      This precious stone set in the siluer sea,
      Which serues it in the office of a wall,
      Or as moate defensiue to a house,
      Against the enuie of lesse happier lands.
      This blessed plot, this earth, this realme, this England...
      Is now leasde out...
      That England that was wont to conquer others,
      Hath made a shamefull conquest
      of it selfe...
    • 1864, Victor Hugo, chapter 6, in Amédée Baillot, transl., William Shakespeare:
      What is England? She is Elizabeth... To live alone, to go alone, to reign alone, to be alone,—such is Elizabeth, such is England...
      England has two books: one which she has made, the other which has made her,—Shakespeare and the Bible. These two books do not agree together... Shakespeare thinks, Shakespeare dreams, Shakespeare doubts... Moreover, Shakespeare invents.
    • 1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn, Pt. I:
      England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted passage, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income.
    • 2012, Maureen Johnson, The Madness Underneath:
      "This is England," he explained. "Tell someone it's a procedure, and they'll believe you. The pointless procedure is one of our great natural resources."
    • 2023 March 21, Jessie Gretener, “Progestagen-only contraceptives carry similar, small breast cancer risk as other hormone contraceptives, study finds”, in CNN‎[2]:
      The authors also said they attempted to investigate whether there are differing breast cancer risks between hormonal and nonhormonal IUDs. However, they said too few women in England had been prescribed nonhormonal IUDs to make a reliable comparison.
  2. (historical) The territory of the Angles and (later) Anglo-Saxons in Britain at any given time before the founding of the Kingdom of England, or the territory of the English people at any given time, in either the Kingdom of England or the United Kingdom.
  3. (chiefly law, historical or archaic) Synonym of England and Wales.
  4. (dated, sometimes proscribed) Synonym of Great Britain or United Kingdom.
    England expects that every man will do his duty.
    • 1882, T. E. Kebbel, Selected Speeches of the Late Right Hon. the Earl of Beaconsfield‎[3], volume 2, page 495:
      There is a very near analogy between the position of the President of the United States and that of the Prime Minister of England, and both are paid at much the same rate — the income of a second-class professional man.
    • 1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn:
      Another twenty years along the present line of development, and India will be a peasant republic linked with England only by voluntary alliance.
    • 1948, Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm‎[4], page 303:
      The partition of Czechoslovakia under pressure from England and France amounts to the complete surrender of the Western Democracies to the Nazi threat of force.
  5. A habitational surname from Old English.
  6. A city in Lonoke County, Arkansas, United States.

As England has always been the most populous part of the United Kingdom, its name has often been used metonymously for the country as a whole, both in English and in other languages. This usage is now often considered uninformed or insulting, particularly to those from other parts of the UK. The 1746 Wales & Berwick Act formalized the previous informal understanding that laws referencing the Kingdom of England alone also applied to the Principality of Wales; this continued to be the case until the 1967 Welsh Language Act required that any similarly general laws afterwards must specify England and Wales separately.

Descendants

Kingdom in southeastern Britain, one of the constituent countries of the UK

From Old English Engla land.

England

  1. England (a constituent country of the United Kingdom)
  2. (informal, somewhat dated) Great Britain (a large island of the United Kingdom in Northern Europe)
  3. (informal, somewhat dated) United Kingdom (a kingdom and country in Northern Europe)

From Old English Engla land.

England n (proper noun, genitive Englands or (optionally with an article) **England)

  1. England (a constituent country of the United Kingdom)
  2. (somewhat informal) Great Britain (a large island of the United Kingdom in Northern Europe)
  3. (somewhat informal) United Kingdom (a kingdom and country in Northern Europe)
  4. (informal, proscribed) the British Isles (an archipelago of Western Europe, including Ireland)

Proto-West Germanic *land

Hunsrik England

Inherited from Middle High German Engellant.[1]

Cognate with German, Luxembourgish, and Pennsylvania German England.

England n

  1. England (a constituent country of the United Kingdom)
  1. ^ Boll, Piter Kehoma (2021), “England”, in Dicionário Hunsriqueano Riograndense–Português, 3rd edition (overall work in Portuguese), Ivoti: Riograndenser Hunsrickisch, page 42, column 1

From Old Norse Ęngland.

England n (proper noun, genitive singular Englands)

  1. England (a constituent country of the United Kingdom)

Declension of England (sg-only neuter)

indefinite singular
nominative England
accusative England
dative Englandi
genitive Englands

England n

  1. England (a constituent country of the United Kingdom)

Borrowed from English England.

England (Jawi spelling ايڠلند)

  1. England (a constituent country of the United Kingdom)
    Coordinate term: Inggeris

England

  1. alternative form of Engelond

    • 1454, Roger Leigh, Clarenceux King of Arms, Confirmation of Arms to John Aleyn of Buckinghamshire:[enm 1]
      Which armes I the seid Clarensewe King of Armes conferme unto the seid John and wtnesse here that nos ꝑsone wtin the Raume of England ought for to bere hem but the seid John and the heirs of his body lawfully begaten. In wtnesse wherof to thise ꝉres I have sette my seall of armes and my signe manuell.
      (please add an English translation of this quotation)

  2. ^ Willoughby Aston Littledale, editor (1925), A Collection of Miscellaneous Grants, Crests, Confirmations, Augmentations and Exemplifications of Arms in the Mss. Preserved in the British Museum, Ashmolean Library, Queen's College, Oxford, and Elsewhere‎[1], volume 76, London: J. Whitehead and Son, Ltd., →OCLC, pages 2–3

England

  1. England (a constituent country of the United Kingdom)
  2. (informal or dated) Great Britain (a large island of the United Kingdom in Northern Europe)
  3. (informal or dated) United Kingdom (a kingdom and country in Northern Europe)

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

England

  1. England (a constituent country of the United Kingdom)

England n

  1. a medieval kingdom in Northern Europe
    • " var sanctus thomas först konungx cancAläre j englande"
      Konung Alexander. Utg. af G.E. Klemming. 1862.

Declension of England

| | singular | | | ------------- | ------------------ | | | indefinite | | | Nominative | England | | Accusative | England | | Dative | Englandi, Englande | | Genitive | Englands |

From Old Swedish England, Engeland, Engelandh.

England n (genitive Englands)

  1. England (a constituent country of the United Kingdom)