burgh

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.

• (Received Pronunciation, Scotland) IPA^(key): /ˈbʌɹə/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Homophone: borough
• Rhymes: -ʌɹə
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈbʌɹoʊ/, /bɝɡ/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Homophones: berg, burg
• Rhymes: (one pronunciation) -ɜː(ɹ)ɡ

burgh (plural burghs)

1. (Sussex) a small mound, often used in reference to tumuli (mostly restricted to place names).
2. (UK) a borough or chartered town (now only used as an official subdivision in Scotland).
   • 1815, William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book Eighth, The Parsonage, lines 95-104,

     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.

   • 1953, C. S. Lewis, chapter 6, in The Silver Chair, Collins, published 1998:

     This road leads to the burgh and castle of Harfang, where dwell the gentle giants.

• Brugh