U.S. state, the region is traditionally said to have been named by Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano when he passed through in 1524, based on an imagined similarity between modern Block Island and the Greek Isle of Rhodes. More likely it is from Roodt Eylandt, the name Dutch explorer Adriaen Block gave to Block Island c. 1614, literally "red island," so called for the color of its cliffs. Under this theory, the name was altered by 17c. English settlers by folk-etymology influence of the Greek island name (see Rhodes) and then extended to the mainland part of the colony. By 1685 the island had been renamed for Block. The Rhode Island red domestic fowl was so called by 1896, for its plumage.
1950, with -ism + name of U.S. Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (1908-1957) of Wisconsin, leader of U.S. anti-Communist agitation. He entered the Senate in 1947, but his rise to national attention began with a widely reported speech on Feb. 9, 1950, in which he claimed to have a list of known Communists working for the State Department. The term is said to have been coined by Washington Post political cartoonist Herbert Block ("Herblock") in an editorial cartoon from March 29, 1950. The Army-McCarthy subcommittee hearings in the U.S. Senate ran from April to June 1954.
The surname is from Irish Mac Carthaigh "son of Carthach" (Welsh Caradawc), an ancient Celtic name, also known in its Latinized form, Caractacus (last of the British leaders to resist Rome, captured 51 C.E.)
"the 130th Psalm" (one of the seven penitential psalms), so called for its opening words in Latin, literally "out of the depths (have I cried)." From ablative plural of profundum (see profound).
proprietary name of a make of watches, registered 1908 by German businessman Hans Wilsdorf, with Wilsdorf & Davis, London. Invented name. The company moved out of Britain 1912 for tax purposes and thence was headquartered in Geneva.
"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.
city in California, named c. 1866 for George Berkeley (1685-1753), Bishop of Cloyne, who denied the objective reality of the material world. The college there opened in 1873. The surname (also Barclay) is the birch-tree wood or clearing. The transuranic element berkelium (1950) is named for the laboratory there, where it was discovered. It does not occur naturally.
Whether they knew or not
Goldsmith and Burke, Swift and the Bishop of Cloyne
All hated Whiggery; but what is Whiggery?
A levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind
That never looked out of the eye of a saint
Or out of drunkard's eye.
[Yeats, from "The Seven Sages"]
