English

Margaret River (Kimberley) in flood

Proper noun

Margaret

1. A female given name.
   • 1590 William Shakespeare: First Part of King Henry the Sixth: Act V, Scene V (the closing lines):

     Margaret shall now be queen, and rule the king;

     But I will rule both her, the king, and realm.

   • 1830 Mary Russell Mitford: Our Village: Cottage Names:

     Margaret, Marguerite - the pearl! the daisy! Oh name of romance and of minstrelsy, which brings the days of chivalry to mind, and the worship of flowers and ladies fair!

   • 1868 Bentley's Miscellany, London. p.417:

     Amongst us English, the name is a greater favourite than with any other nation: but we have played upon it, and abused it oftener too. In no language does Margaret sound sweeter or homelier than in ours: not so Mag, Maggie, Meg, Madge, Moggie, Peg, Peggy, and abominable Piggy, of which abridgements only the two first are defensible.

   • 2012 Louise Erdrich, The Round House, Corsair (2013), ISBN 9781472108166, page 292:

     The girls from our year were mainly named some version of Shawn. There was Shawna, Dawna, Shawnee, Dawnali, Shalana, and just plain Dawn and Shawn. There was also a girl named Margaret, named after her grandmother, who worked at the post office. I ended up talking with Margaret.

2. A river of southwestern Western Australia, presumed named for a cousin of John Garrett Bussell, founder of Busselton.
3. A river of the Kimberley region of Western Australia, named for its European discoverer's sister-in-law.
4. (astronomy) A moon of Uranus, named for a character in Much Ado About Nothing. [Discovered 2003]
   • 2009, Richard Schmude, Jr., Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto and How to Observe Them, page 58,

     Astronomers discovered nine small moons lying outside the orbit of Oberon (Francisco, Caliban, Stephano, Trinculo, Sycorax, Margaret, Prospero, Setebos, and Ferdinand) between 1997 and 2003.

   • 2012, Peter Bond, Exploring the Solar System, page 297,

     The odd one out is Margaret, which travels in a "normal" prograde direction, though it has the most eccentric orbit of all the Uranian satellites.

   • 2013, David A. J. Seargent, Weird Worlds: Bizarre Bodies of the Solar System and Beyond, page 225,

     […] moons known to be moving in a prograde or direct orbit is Margaret, orbiting Uranus at an average distance of nearly nine million miles (14,845,000 km) in an orbit that currently exceeds all other Solar System moons in terms of eccentricity (0.7979). […] Margaret takes about 4.6 Earth years to complete a single orbit of the planet.

Derived terms

• Margaret River (town, winegrowing region)

Related terms

Translations

See also

• Daisy
• Pearl
• marguerite
• moggy

Anagrams

• teragram

Estonian

Proper noun

Margaret

1. A female given name of modern usage, borrowed from English or shortened from Margareeta.

Norwegian

Alternative forms

• Margareth

Proper noun

Margaret

1. A female given name borrowed from English, best used in the mid-twentieth century.