Brittany
Pronunciation
- UK IPA: /ˈbɹɪt(ə)ni/
Origin
From Latin Brittania, presumably from Celtic. Compare Britain.
Proper noun
Brittany
(plural Brittanys)- A region in north-west France. from 15th c.
- 1595, William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, part 3, First Folio 1623, Act II, Scene VI:First, will I see the Coronation,
And then to Britanny Ile crosse the Sea,
To effect this marriage, so it please my Lord. - (obsolete, chiefly poetic) The British Isles. 15th-19th c.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.11:The noble Thamis … seem'd to stoupe afore
With bowed backe, by reason of the lode
And auncient heavy burden which he bore
Of that faire City, wherein make abode
So many learned impes, that shoote abrode,
And with their braunches spred all Britany …. - popular in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s.
- 1990 Alice Munro, Friend of My Youth, ISBN 0679729577, page 102:- - - No one has family names. These girls with rooster hair I see on the streets. They pick the names. They're the mothers." "I have a granddaughter named Brittany," Hazel said. " And I have heard of a little girl called Cappuccino." "Cappuccino! Is that true? Why don't they call one Cassaulet? Fettuccini? Alsace-Lorraine?"
- 1999 Andrew Pyper, Lost Girls: Chapter Ten:Names of the times. Borrowed from soap opera characters of prominence fifteen years ago, who have since been replaced by spiffy new models: the social-climbing Brittany now an unscrupulous Burke, the generous Pamela a refitted, urbanized Parker.