Chapter Waldenses to Walnut of W by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

“wallflowers.”

Walloons Part of the great Romain stock. They occupied the low track along the frontiers of the German- speaking territory, as Artois, Hainault, Namur, Liége, Luxemburg, with parts of Flanders and Brabant. (See Wales .)

“The Wallons ... are the Romanised Gauls, lineal representatives of the ancient Belgae.”- Encyclopoedia Britannica, vol. xxi. p. 332.

Wallop To thrash. Sir John Wallop, in the reign of Henry VIII., was sent to Normandy to make reprisals, because the French fleet had burnt Brighton. Sir John burnt twenty-one towns and villages, demolished several harbours, and “walloped” the foe to his heart's content.

Wallsend Coals Originally, from Wallsend, on the Tyne, but now from any part of a large district about Newcastle.

Walnut [foreign nut ]. It comes from Persia, and is so called to distinguish it from those native to Europe, as hazel, filbert, chestnut. (Anglo-Saxon, walh, foreign; hnutu, nut.)

“Some difficulty there is in cracking the name thereof. Why wallnuts, having no affinity to a wall, should be so called. The truth is, gual or wall in the old Dutch signifleth `strange' or texotic' (whence Welsh, foreigners); these nuts being no natives of England or Europe, but probably first fetched from Persia, and called by the French nux persique. ”- Fuller: Worthies of England.