country name, of unknown origin, perhaps from Old Persian Aturpatakan, from Greek Atropatenē, from the Persian satrap Atropates, who ruled there in the time of Alexander the Great; or from local azer "fire" + baydjan (Iranian baykan) "guardian," in reference to fire-worship. Related: Azerbaijani.
type of light, rapid-fire submachine gun, 1942, from initials of surnames of designers R.V. Shepherd and H.J. Turpin + En(field); compare Bren.
fem. proper name, from Irish Brighid, name of a goddess associated with fire, spring, fertility, healing, poetry and smithcraft, from brigh "strength," from Celtic *brig-o-, from PIE *bhrgh-nt- "high, mighty," from root *bhergh- (2) "high."
c. 1700, "pertaining to or founded by antiquarian Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1570-1631), especially in reference to the library in the British Museum, named for him. He donated some books to the state and his grandson donated the rest. It was badly damaged in a fire in 1731. The surname represents Old English cotum, plural of cot "cottage."
god of fire and metal-work in Roman mythology, 1510s, from Latin Vulcanus, Volcanus, according to Klein a word of Etruscan origin. Often with allusions to his lameness and the unfaithfulness of his wife, Venus. As the name of a hypothetical planet between Mercury and the Sun, it is attested from 1860 in English (see intramercurial). The Roman feast of Vulcanalia was on Aug. 23.
1915, proprietary name (Corning Glass Works, Corning, N.Y.) of a type of hard, heat-resistant glass, an arbitrary coinage, in which advertisement writers and eager etymologists see implications of Greek pyr "fire" and perhaps Latin rex "king;" but the prosaic inventors say it was based on pie (n.1), because pie dishes were among the first products made from it. The -r-, in that case, is purely euphonious.
masc. proper name, from Old High German Erchanbald, literally "genuine-bold," from erchan "genuine" + bald (see bold). Archie, British World War I military slang for "German anti-aircraft fire" or the guns that produce it (1915) is said in contemporary sources to be from the airmen dodging hostile fire and thinking of the refrain of a then-popular music hall song.
It's no use me denying facts, I'm henpecked, you can see!
'Twas on our wedding day my wife commenced to peck at me
The wedding breakfast over, I said, "We'll start off today
Upon our honeymoon."
Then she yelled, "What! waste time that way?"
[chorus] "Archibald, certainly not!
Get back to work at once, sir, like a shot.
When single you could waste time spooning
But lose work now for honeymooning!
Archibald, certainly not!"
[John L. St. John & Alfred Glover, "Archibald, Certainly Not"]
masc. proper name, from Latin Antonius, name of a Roman gens (with an unetymological -h- probably suggested by many Greek loan words beginning anth-, such as anthros "flower," anthropos "man").
St. Anthony (4c.), Egyptian hermit, was patron saint of swineherds, to whom one of each litter was usually vowed, hence Anthony for "smallest pig of the litter" (1660s; in condensed form tantony pig from 1590s). St. Anthony's Fire (1520s), popular name for erysipelas, is said to be so called from the tradition that those who sought his intercession recovered from that distemper during a fatal epidemic in 1089.
in Greek mythology, a demigod (son of the Titan Iapetus) who made man from clay and stole fire from heaven and taught mankind its use, for which he was punished by Zeus by being chained to a rock in the Caucasus, where a vulture came every day and preyed on his liver.
The name is Greek, and anciently was interpreted etymologically as "forethinker, foreseer," from promēthēs "thinking before," from pro "before" (see pro-) + *mēthos, related to mathein "to learn" (from an enlargement of PIE root *men- (1) "to think"). In another view this is folk-etymology, and Watkins suggests the second element is possibly from a base meaning "to steal," also found in Sanskrit mathnati "he steals."
1382, in the Wycliffe Bible, a word taken untranslated from the Vulgate, from Greek ariel (Septuagint), from Hebrew ariel; in later Bibles, translated as "altar."
(Gesenius would here translate "fire-hearth of God," after Arab. arr; elsewhere in O.T. the same word occurs as a man's name, and appellation of Jerusalem, where it is taken as = "lion of God.") Ariel in T. Heywood and Milton is the name of an angel, in Shakespeare of "an Ayrie spirit"; in Astron. of one of the satellites of Uranus. [OED]
As the name of a species of gazelle found in the Middle East, 1832, from Arabic aryil, variant of ayyil "stag." The Uranian satellite was discovered in 1851.
