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14 entries found.

imaginary earthly paradise, 1938, from Shangri La, name of Tibetan utopia in James Hilton's novel "Lost Horizon" (1933, film version 1937). In Tibetan, la means "mountain pass."

Ithuriel's spear

the image is from "Paradise Lost," and turns up in late 19c. literature. The weapon caused anything it touched to assume its true form. Ithuriel is an archangel in the poem. The name is older and appears to be Kabbalistic.

Athens

city of ancient Attica, capital of modern Greece, from Greek Athenai (plural because the city had several distinct parts), traditionally derived from Athena, but probably assimilated from a lost name in a pre-Hellenic language.

Curacao

West Indian island, Curaçao, discovered 1499 by Alonso de Hojeda, who called it Isla de los Gigantes in reference to the stature of the natives. The modern name probably is a Europeanized version of a lost native word. The liqueur (1813) is made from the dried peel of the Curaçao orange.

Phillips

proper name of a cross-slot screw and corresponding screwdriver, 1935, named for its inventor, U.S. businessman Henry F. Phillips (1890-1958) of Portland, Oregon. It was designed for car makers, hence the handyman's complaint that they are difficult to un-screw. Phillips lost the patent in 1949.

Thule

region or island at northernmost part of the world, Old English, from Latin, from Greek Thyle "land six days' sail north of Britain" (Strabo, quoting a lost portion of a work by Polybius, itself based on a lost account of a voyage to the north by 4c. B.C.E. geographer Pytheas). The identity of the place and the source of the name have sparked much speculation; Polybius doubted the whole thing, and since Roman times the name has been used in a transferred sense of "extreme limits of travel" (Ultima Thule).

The barbarians showed us where the sun set. For it happened in those places that the night was extremely short, lasting only two or three hours; and the sun sunk under the horizon, after a short interval reappeared at his rising. [Pytheas]

The name was given to a trading post in Greenland in 1910, site of a U.S. air base in World War II.

Camp David

U.S. presidential retreat near Thurmont, Maryland, built 1939 as Hi-Catoctin, in reference to the name of the mountains around it; called Shangri-La by F.D. Roosevelt, after the mythical hard-to-get-to land in the novel "Lost Horizon;" named Camp David by Eisenhower in 1953 for his grandson, born 1947. The Camp David Accords were signed there Sept. 17, 1978.

Bahamas

islands discovered by Columbus in 1492, settled by English in 1648, long after the native population had been wiped out by disease or carried off into slavery; the name is said to be from Spanish baja mar "low sea," in reference to the shallow water here, but more likely represents a local name, Guanahani, whose origin had been lost and whose meaning has been forgotten.

Ionic (adj.)

"pertaining to Ionia or the Ionians," 1570s of music; 1580s of architecture, from Latin Ionicus, from Greek Ionikos (see Ionian). In prosody, a foot of two long syllables followed by two short. The Ionic school of philosophers (Thales, Anaxamander, etc.) studied the material world in ways that somewhat anticipated observational science. It also once was the name of an important school of Greek painting, but all of it save the name is lost. Related: Ionicize (1841).

Sardinia

large island west of Italy, Latin, from Greek Sardō, Sardōn; perhaps named for the local Iberian people who had settled there; the original form and meaning of the name is lost. A Punic (Phoenician) stelle from 7c. B.C.E. refers to it as Shardan.

The oblique cases in Greek are sometimes Sardonos, etc. Related: Sardinian, which in 19c. sometimes was shortened to Sard. The historical Kingdom of Sardinia was formed in 1720 from the island and parts of Piedmont and Savoy; it became the nucleus of the modern nation of Italy.

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