loo (was: Come off the money (= get off the dime?))

[Peter A. McGraw]

--On Wednesday, April 17, 2002 9:12 AM -0400 "James A. Landau"
<JJJRLandau at AOL.COM> wrote:

> (Somebody who pays the rental for use of a pay booth is therefore a "lieu
> tenant"??)

Not in Britain, unless they rent the booth on the left. :)


> Does anybody know the origin of the name "Waterloo"?  The village of
> Waterloo appears to be in a French-speaking area of Belgium, considering
> that important places on the battlefield had names like Mont-Saint-Jean,
> Chateau de Hougomont, l'Haye Saint, and the strangely prophetic "La Belle
> Alliance" (I don't have a reference handy to check the spellings).  The
> "w" and "oo" in "Waterloo" are definitely not French.  (But not too far
> away is the initial-w town of "Wavre", which also played an important
> part in the battle.)  An obvious guess is "Wasser-lieu", a Dutch-French
> hybrid meaning "place of water", but then how did it acquire such an
> Anglicized spelling?  Or did Wellington (who spoke French but not Dutch)
> manage to misspell the name?

Whatever the language spoken there now, Waterloo is definitely a Dutch
name.  I don't know the etymology of the suffix -loo, but it's found in
other place names, often spelled with just one o (e.g., Almelo) and in
family names (which may have come from place names), e.g. Appello.

Peter Mc.


****************************************************************************
                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu