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Re: Lipscomb name
Everyone was too embarrassed to publish it again. A comb or combe is a basin, referring to a household article, a unit of measure, or a geographical feature resembling a basin, not limestone cliffs or a valley below limestone cliffs. In actuality, it seems they've started with a place name, and attempted to engineer a fanciful meaning, when in fact the meaning is simple. In OE the place is recorded variously as hlíp-cumb, hlýp-cumbe or hlýpcumbe, literally "leap-basin", a "leap" in reference to a salmon jump, a steep fall in a stream. Thus hlip-cumb, is a geological basin surrounded by steep sides or cliffs (perhaps they were limestone, but that's irrelevant to the meaning). At some point it's been equated with several places known as Luscombe or Loscombe, from Hlos-combe — a combe used as a "looze" or pigsty, and gained a misplaced "s".
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