vichy
/ˈviːʃi/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.74 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
A town in Allier department, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, France; the capital of Vichy France during World War II.
name
A town in Allier department, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, France; the capital of Vichy France during World War II.
noun
Labelling a regime that is traitorous or established in cooperation with a foreign or hostile power, especially in administration of occupied territory.
Derogatory
Example Sentences
- "More recently, a succession of novels, including Robert Harris's Fatherland, Resistance by Owen Sheers and CJ Sansom's Dominion – which imagines a Vichy Britain in 1952 ruled by Lord Beaverbrook and Oswald Mosley – have explored the same theme."
- "In 1940, having shunned German overtures for him to serve in the government of a future “Vichy Russia,” he fled to southern France to escape the Nazi invasion."
- ""There is not going to be a Vichy Ukraine," former U.S. Ukraine Ambassador John Herbst told the Post."
Etymology
From French Vichy, from Occitan Vichèi, phonetically evolved from the Latin place name Vippiacus, itself named after an agricultural field belonging to a farmer named Vippius. An alternate theory attributes the name to the Latin vicus calidus, meaning "warm settlement."
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
- Root: Vichy, Vichèi, -