English
Windrush
Windrush comes from Old English Wenric.
- Old Englishc. 450–1150Wenric
- Englishearliest quotation 2012Windrush
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed
Lineage
- Old Englishc. 450–1150Wenric
- Englishearliest quotation 2012Windrush
Earliest quotation: 2012, Supriya M. Nair, Teaching Anglophone Caribbean Literature: “Black Britain's past stretches back to India and Africa,…”
The story
First attested in the Domesday Book as Old English Wenric, from Old Welsh gwynn (‘white’) + reisko (‘fen’). More recent senses derive from the ship HMT Empire Windrush, named after the River Windrush. The arrival of 802 immigrants to the UK from the West Indies onboard the Empire Windrush in 1948 is seen as symbolic of the beginning of mass immigration from the Caribbean to the UK. The Windrush line was named for its running through several parts of London with large British Caribbean population.
Every English word from Old English Wenric
Today it means
name A river in Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, England, a tributary of the Thames.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Old English Wenric / Windrush