Torpenhow Hill
Template:Short description Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Torpenhow Hill (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell) is claimed to be the name of a hill near the village of Torpenhow in Cumbria, England, a name that is tautological. According to an analysis by linguist Darryl Francis and locals, there is no landform formally known as Torpenhow Hill there, either officially or locally,<ref name="Francis">Template:Cite journal</ref> which would make the term an example of a ghost word.
A. D. Mills in his Dictionary of English Place-Names interprets the name as "Ridge of the hill with a rocky peak", giving its etymology as Old English {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, Celtic {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, and Old English {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, each of which mean Template:Gloss.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Thus, the name Torpenhow Hill could be interpreted as Template:Gloss.
In 1688, Thomas Denton stated that Torpenhow Hall and church stand on a Template:Gloss, which he assumed might have been the source of the name of the village.<ref name="EPNS">English Place Name Society, 1950, The Place-names of Cumberland, p. 326.</ref><ref>Thomas Denton: A Perambulation of Cumberland, 1687–1688, including descriptions of Westmorland, the Isle of Man and Ireland.Template:Pn</ref> Denton apparently exaggerated the example to a "Torpenhow Hill", which would quadruple the "hill" element, but the existence of a toponym "Torpenhow Hill" is not substantiated.<ref name="Francis" />
In 1884, G. L. Fenton proposed the name as an example of "quadruple redundancy" in tautological place name etymologies, i.e. that all four elements of the name might mean "hill".<ref name="Fenton">Template:Cite journal</ref> It was used as a convenient example for the nature of loanword adoption by Thomas Comber around 1880.<ref>"...the name thus meaning in reality hill-hill-hill-hill. Fortunately the Normans let it remain, and we are spared from having to call the place 'Torpenhow hill-mount'." Thomas Comber, "The Origin of the English Names of Plants", The Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Volume 15 (1904), p. 616.</ref>