Pronounced: KOL-uh-fon (alt: KOL-uh-fun), noun
Notes: I have read the word, but I didn’t know the definition
Yesterday’s word
The word redbrick means
- built of red brick
- of, relating to, or being the British universities founded in the 19th or early 20th century
First usage
Our word came into English in the early 1700s
Background / Comments
The first definition is kind of “duh!”; it’s what most people would think it meant. The second meaning is a more informal British phrasing, and is not complimentary. Oxford and Cambridge were build of stone, and the newer schools (and – at least at first – less prestigious than these two) were usually made of brick — thus, our word. The word has also been used to describe the universities that came into being after World War II.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 