West Country
1
4.3
- proper noun
:
West Country
- Our London trio is gearing up for the imminent trip to the West Country.
- West Country in England
Examples
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The cloth weaving villages of the West Country, for example, produced most of the trade blankets which went to supply the fur traders in North America.
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Mind you, we had six inches of snow in the West Country yesterday, at least a month earlier than it could possibly be expected, so goodness knows what the winter is going to be like.
Blog text (16) -
I have my own yard in the West Country.
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I left London when I was 11 and moved to the West Country. I missed London then, but now I'm not a city person.
Blog text (7) -
Margaret's been left a small Georgian house in the West Country
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The quaint and pastoral West Country includes Devon, located in the far southwest of England.
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And there's a very healthy music scene in the West Country of England, where I grew up.
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Our London trio is gearing up for the imminent trip to the West Country.
Surface Forms
Morphology
west + Country
The compound is compositionally built from 'west' (the western part) + 'country' (nation/region), so its basic meaning 'the western region of a country' is directly derivable from the constituents. While the capitalized form denotes a specific area of England (southwest), the general notion of a western region is cross-linguistically regular and would be understood by a B1 learner who knows both words.
Etymology
West Country is a name that comes from calling the land in the west of England the country. So, it now means the southwestern area with farms, coasts and towns such as Cornwall, Devon and Somerset.