English

Alternative forms

• (female given name): Britney, Brittney

Proper noun

Brittany

1. A region in north-west France. [from 15th c.]
   • 1595, William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, part 3, First Folio 1623, Act II, Scene VI:

     First, will I see the Coronation, / And then to Britanny Ile crosse the Sea, / To effect this marriage, so it please my Lord.

2. (obsolete, chiefly poetic) The British Isles. [15th-19th c.]
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.11:

     The noble Thamis […] seem'd to stoupe afore / With bowed backe, by reason of the lode / And auncient heavy burden which he bore / Of that faire City, wherein make abode / So many learned impes, that shoote abrode, / And with their braunches spred all Britany […].

3. A female given name popular in the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s.
   • 1990 Alice Munro, Friend of My Youth, ISBN 0679729577, page 102:

     - - - No one has family names. These girls with rooster hair I see on the streets. They pick the names. They're the mothers." "I have a granddaughter named Brittany," Hazel said. " And I have heard of a little girl called Cappuccino." "Cappuccino! Is that true? Why don't they call one Cassaulet? Fettuccini? Alsace-Lorraine?"

   • 1999 Andrew Pyper, Lost Girls: Chapter Ten:

     Names of the times. Borrowed from soap opera characters of prominence fifteen years ago, who have since been replaced by spiffy new models: the social-climbing Brittany now an unscrupulous Burke, the generous Pamela a refitted, urbanized Parker.

4. (prison slang) Coward
5. (dogs) A breed of gun dog.

Related terms

• Breton
• Britain
• British
• Briton

Translations

See also

• Countries of the world