Burgh
name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 a small mound, often used in reference to tumuli (mostly restricted to place names).
- 2 a borough in Scotland wordnet
- 3 a borough or chartered town (now only used as an official subdivision in Scotland). UK
"1815, William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book Eighth, The Parsonage, lines 95-104, http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww405.html With fruitless pains / Might one like me 'now' visit many a tract / Which, in his youth, he trod, and trod again, / A lone pedestrian with a scanty freight, / Wished-for, or welcome, wheresoe'er he came— / Among the tenantry of thorpe and vill; / Or straggling burgh, of ancient charter proud, / And dignified by battlements and towers / Of some stern castle, mouldering on the brow / Of a green hill or bank of rugged stream."
- 1 A topographical surname from Anglo-Norman for someone who lived in a fortified place.
Example
More examples"Mary shows the old burgh to her aunt and uncle."
Etymology
From Middle English borwe, borgh, burgh, buruh, from Old English burh, from Proto-West Germanic *burg, from Proto-Germanic *burgz (“city, stronghold”). Cognate with Dutch burg, French bourg, German Burg, Persian برج (borj, “tower; battlement, fort”), Swedish borg. Doublet of borough, Brough, and Bury.
From the Anglo-Norman word burgh.
Related phrases
More for "burgh"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.