A.Word.A.Day --alsatia

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Apr 7, 2025

This week’s theme
Toponyms

This week’s words
alsatia

Map: Google Maps

Previous week’s theme
Tools and devices that became metaphors

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Everyone likes going places. One might call it a vacation, another a holiday, and some just call it escaping the inbox. But what if your travel plans were dictated by the _literal_ meaning of the word? Here’s what your itinerary would look like, etymologically speaking:

journey: A day trip (from French jour: day). About 20 miles max in those days
travel: Torture (Latin trepaliare: to torture). Because travel in those days wasn’t exactly a trip to Disneyland
holiday: Perhaps a pilgrimage, because holiday is, literally, holy day. Well, you could worship the sun
pilgrimage: A foreign trip (Latin peregrinus: foreign)
visit: Go see a place (Latin videre: to see). So if you attend a concert, would that be an audit? (Latin audire: to hear)
trip: Dancing in the backyard (Old French triper: to hop, skip, leap, dance)
vacation: Vacate the home? Also, the wallet? (Latin vacare: to be empty)
tour: Spinning in circles? (Greek tornos: lathe)

Good thing etymology isn’t destiny. A word is not limited to its roots or what it meant originally.

This week we’re taking you on a, well, let’s call it a jaunt (origin unknown). We’ll explore places, far and wide, that have become metaphors in the English language. Such words are also called toponyms, from Greek topo- (place) + -nym (name).

What are your favorite places to visit, whether down the road or across the globe? Do you have a location that you return to again and again? Why? Tell us via our website or email us at words@wordsmith.org. Include your home base (city, state).

And wherever you go, may your journey be less “trepaliare” and more “trip”!

alsatia

PRONUNCIATION:

(al-SAY-shuh)

MEANING:

noun
1. A sanctuary.
2. A lawless place.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Alsatia, an area north of River Thames in London, once out of the reach of law. Earliest documented use: 1676.

NOTES:

Once upon a Thames, Alsatia was a holy hideaway: a monastery-turned-sanctuary (Whitefriars) north of the river in London. But what began as a sacred refuge slowly turned into a safe haven for debtors, criminals, and general ne’er-do-wells.

The name Alsatia is a Latinized nod to Alsace, a border region in France that once had a similarly lawless reputation thanks to the centuries of tug-of-war between France and German states. One might say it was a region that couldn’t decide whether to say bonjour or guten tag, so it said neither and punched you in the face.

By the late 1600s, the term Alsatia had morphed into a metaphor for any unruly place where laws were more like suggestions and sanctuary came with a side of shenanigans.

USAGE:

“‘[The] state has set out to create an Alsatia -- a region of executive action free of judicial oversight,’ said Lord Justice Sedley.”
Paul Lashmar; Law Lords Slam Crime Agency for Freezing UMBS Payments; The Independent on Sunday (London, UK); May 27, 2007.

“Maggie always appeared in the most amiable light at her aunt Moss’s; it was her Alsatia, where she was out of the reach of law.”
George Eliot; The Mill on the Floss; William Blackwood and Sons; 1860.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. -William Wordsworth, poet (7 Apr 1770-1850)

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