masc. proper name, from Old French rousel, diminutive of rous "red," used as a personal name. See russet. Also a name for a fox, in allusion to its color. Compare French rousseau, which, like it, has become a surname. Russell's Paradox, "the set of all sets that do not contain themselves as elements," is named for Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) who is said to have framed it about 1901.
name of the temple of Athena Parthenos on the Acropolis in Athens, from Greek Parthenōn, literally "temple of the virgin goddess" (Athene), also, in a general sense, "the young women's apartments in a house," from parthenos "virgin, maiden, girl," a word of unknown origin. Beekes finds "acceptable" its derivation from IE *psteno- "breast" on the notion of "having protruding breasts." The temple was completed about 438 B.C.E., later served as a church and then a mosque under the Turks, and was shattered by an explosion of gunpowder stored there in 1687 during the Venetian siege.
late 14c., Arrian, "adhering to the doctrines of Arius," from Late Latin Arianus, "pertaining to the doctrines of Arius," priest in Alexandria early 4c., who posed the question of Christ's nature in terms which appeared to debase the Savior's relation to God (denial of consubstantiation). Besides taking an abstract view of Christ's nature, he reaffirmed man's capacity for perfection. The doctrines were condemned at Nice, 325, but the dissension was widespread and split the Church for about a century during the crucial time of barbarian conversions. The name is Greek, literally "warlike, of Ares."
1828, noun and adjective, in reference to a seceding group of American Quakers, from the name of their spiritual leader, Elias Hicks. The remainder of the profession (the minority numerically) were known as Orthodox Friends. The schism occurred in 1827 at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. The surname is from Hick, popular pet form of Richard.
About the only way I can tell whether a particular Meeting was Orthodox or Hicksite has to do with clocks and pianos. If these — particularly a clock — are present, that Meeting was Hicksite. If not, it was Orthodox. [Francis G. Brown, "Downingtown Friends Meeting," 1999]
name of a region in north central India, from Sanskrit gondavana, from vana "forest" + Gonda, Sanskrit name of a Dravidian people, said to mean literally "fleshy navel, outie belly-button."
The name was extended by geologists to a series of sedimentary rocks found there (1873), then to identical rocks in other places. Because the fossils found in this series were used by geologists to reconstruct the map of the supercontinent which broke up into the modern southern continents of the globe about 180 million years ago, this was called Gondwanaland (1896), from German, where it was coined by German geologist Eduard Suess in 1885.
1690s, name of an Indian tribe in south-central Pennsylvania, probably from some Iroquoian language and sometimes said to mean "people of the cabin pole;" later a place in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
A characteristic type of covered wagon built there is called Conestoga wagon by 1750 (about three years before the last of the Conestoga Indians were massacred), but it already was an established term, as the first reference is to the name of a Philadelphia tavern, and probably originally it meant the type of wagon farmers used on the road from the city to Conestoga. It seems to have become a popular term in the 1830s to describe the "land ship" used by U.S. pioneers headed west. Also a breed of horses (1824) and a type of boot and cigar (see stogie).
