"person out of touch with current conditions," 1829, the name of the character in Washington Irving's popular Catskills tale (published 1819) of the henpecked husband who sleeps enchanted for 20 years and finds the world has forgotten him.

ancient king of Phrygia, 1560s; the name is of Phrygian origin.  He was given by the gods the gift of turning all he touched to gold, but as this included his food he had to beg them to take it back again. Hence Midas touch (1883). But the oldest references to him in English are to the unrelated story of the ass's ears given him by Apollo for being dull to the charms of his lyre.

Spanish, diminutive of Venecia "Venice" (see Venice). Supposedly the name was given by Spanish sailors in 1499 when they saw a native village built on piles on Lake Maracaibo. Related: Venezuelan.

fem. proper name, also a poetic name of the Moon, from Latin Cynthia dea "the Cynthian goddess," epithet of Artemis/Diana, who is said to have been born on Mt. Cynthus (Greek Kynthos) on the isle of Delos.

1776, of or resembling the writings of English thinker Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), whose works on political philosophy have a reputation for their bleak outlook on the world. The surname is from Hob. The earlier adjective was Hobbian (1680s).

land on the northeast coast of the Black Sea, named for its people. Related: Abkhasian.

organized as a U.S. territory 1838; admitted as a state 1846, named for the river, ultimately from the name of the native people, of the Chiwere branch of the Siouan family; said to be from Dakota ayuxba "sleepy ones," or from an Algonquian language (Bright cites Miami/Illinois /aayohoowia/). On a French map of 1673 it appears as Ouaouiatonon. John Quincy Adams, in his diary entries on the House of Representatives debate on the territorial bill in 1838, writes it Ioway. Related: Iowan.

seminal rock and pop group formed in Liverpool, England; named as such 1960 (after a succession of other names), supposedly by then-bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, from beetles (on model of Buddy Holly's band The Crickets) with a pun on the musical sense of beat. Their global popularity dates to 1963.

a people of the Iroquois confederacy, 1680s, named for its principal settlement, from Onondaga onontake, literally "on the hill."

pertaining to the works or ideas of French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596-1650), 1650s, from Cartesius, the Latinized form of his surname (regarded as Des Cartes) + -ian. In addition to his philosophy (based on the fundamental principle cogito, ergo sum), he developed a system of coordinates for determining the positions of points on a plane.