combe

See also: Combe and combé

English

Alternative forms

• comb, coomb, coombe

Etymology

From Middle English coumbe, cumbe, from Old English cumb, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *kumbaz; compare Dutch kom (“bowl, basin”), German Kump (“vessel”).

Related to Welsh cwm (“a hollow valley”), Ancient Greek κύμβη (kúmbē, “hollow”), Sanskrit कुम्भ (kumbha, “a pot, jug”), etc. through Proto-Indo-European *ḱumbʰ-.

Pronunciation

• (UK) enPR: ko͞om, IPA^(key): /kuːm/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Homophones: coom, cwm
• Rhymes: -uːm

Noun

combe (plural combes)

1. A valley, often wooded and often with no river
   • 1914, Saki, ‘The Cobweb’, Beasts and Superbeasts:

     its long, latticed window [...] looked out on a wild spreading view of hill and heather and wooded combe.

   • 1805, Robert Southey, “(please specify the page)”, in Madoc, London: […] [F]or Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and A[rchibald] Constable and Co, […], by James Ballantyne, […], →OCLC:

     gradual rise the shelving combe displayed.

   • 1950 April, Timothy H. Cobb, “The Kenya-Uganda Railway”, in Railway Magazine, pages 264-265:

     You wake up next morning on what looks like Salisbury Plain, only here you climb up the side of every combe, round the end and out the other side.

2. A cirque.

Usage notes

Used, especially in South West England, in many placenames, e.g. Compton, Salcombe, Wycombe.

Derived terms

• Comberow
• Comstock

 

Translations

deep, narrow valley

• Bulgarian: клисура (bg) f (klisura)
• Catalan: coma (ca) f, comal m
• French: combe (fr) f
• Polish: cyrk lodowcowy (pl) m, kar (pl) m, kocioł (pl) m
• Portuguese: comba f

Further reading

• combe on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

French

Etymology

From Transalpine Gaulish *cumba, from Proto-Celtic *kumbā. Compare Breton komm (“river-bed”), Irish com, Welsh cwm.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kɔ̃b/

Noun

combe f (plural combes)

1. (geography) combe (valley or hollow, often wooded and with no river)

Further reading

• “combe”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Galician

Verb

combe

1. inflection of combar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkom.be/
• Rhymes: -ombe
• Hyphenation: cóm‧be

Noun

combe f

1. plural of comba

Middle English

Noun

combe

1. Alternative form of comb

Spanish

Verb

combe

1. inflection of combar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative