thorp

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English thorp, also throp,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English þorp and þrop,^[5][3][2][6] reinforced by Old Norse þorp (“village, hamlet, farmstead”),^[7][2][8] which Hoad and the Shorter Oxford see behind the first of these Old English forms.^[9][10] It goes back to Proto-Germanic *þurpą,^[1][7][11] with cognates in Old Frisian thorp, Old Saxon thorp, Dutch dorp, Old High German thorf, German Dorf and Gothic 𐌸𐌰𐌿𐍂𐍀 (þaurp, “estate, land, field”).^[5][7][3][9] The OED calls its further origin doubtful and its original sense unclear.^[5] Klein and Watkins probably derive it from Proto-Indo-European *treb- (“dwelling, to build”), with Latin trabs (“beam”), taberna (“hut, booth”) (the source of tavern) and Lithuanian trobà (“a building”);^[3][7][12] others have compared turba (“crowd”) or tribus (“tribe”) and Welsh tref (“town”),^[5] and Boutkan, as reported by Etymonline, rejects most of the cognates outside Germanic on phonetic grounds and suspects a substrate word.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A hamlet, village or small town: Old English,^[5] first in the Corpus Glossary, where it glosses Latin conpetum.^[5][13] Dictionary.com dates the word before 900,^[14] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged before the 12th century.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The first meaning is hard to establish: the Germanic languages range from Gothic "field" to German "village".^[5] Bosworth–Toller suggests that the word first meant an assemblage, comparing þyrpast (“to crowd”), then the workers on an estate, and then the estate itself.^[13] Old English also used it for a farm or estate,^[13][7] and in Middle English it meant especially an agricultural village;^[5] the Middle English Dictionary also records a doubtful sense "crossroads", and the word in surnames and place names.^[2] Chaucer has it six times, as thorp and throop.^[15] Weekley says it dropped out of use about 1600 and was revived by Wordsworth.^[8] Johnson (1755) treated it only as a place-name element, listing thorp, throp, threp, trep, trop.^[16] Wright found it still spoken in Lincolnshire, but in several other counties confined to place names, often as thrup, as in Northamptonshire Kingsthrup.^[17]

Timeline

• before 900 – a hamlet or village.^[14][5]
• before 1121 – þorpes, villages belonging to Medeshamstede, in the Peterborough Chronicle.^[2]
• c. 1600 – out of general use until revived as a poetic word.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. (archaic) A small village or hamlet.^[4][10][5]
2. The same word as an element in English place names, in forms such as -thorpe and -thrup.^{[18][10][7][17]}

Related words

• terp
• dorp

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
4. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
9. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
12. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
13. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
14. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
15. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
16. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
17. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
18. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins