The BFD Word of the Day

The word for today is…

eponymous (adjective):

: of, relating to, or being the person or thing for whom or which something is named : of, relating to, or being an eponym

Source : Merriam -Webster

Etymology : What’s in a name? If the name is eponymous, a name is in the name: an eponymous brand, café, river, or ice cream is named for someone or something. And because English is beastly sometimes, the one lending the name to the brand, café, river, or ice cream can also be described as eponymous. This means that if David Theobald owns a bookshop called “Theobald’s Books,” it’s an eponymous bookshop, and David himself is the bookshop’s eponymous owner. Most of the time, though, we see eponymous describing a thing named for a person—for example, an eponymous brand named for a designer, or a band’s eponymous album titled only with the band’s name. The related word eponym is less ambiguous: it refers to the one for whom someone or something is named. At our hypothetical “Theobald’s Books,” David Theobald is the bookshop’s eponym. Appropriately enough, the Greek root of both words is onyma, meaning “name.”

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