Wormwood Street. From the bitter herbs which sprang up along the Roman Wall in ancient times.
Worsted. After a town in Norfolk of the same name where this fabric was of old the staple industry.
Writes like an Angel. Dr Johnson said of Oliver Goldsmith: “He writes like an angel and talks like a fool.” The allusion was to Angelo Vergeco, a Greek of the sixteenth century, noted for his beautiful handwriting.
Wych Street. This now vanished thoroughfare was anciently Aldwych, “Old Town,” so called because it led from St Clement Danes Church to the isolated settlement in the parish of St Giles’s-in-the-Fields, which in our time is known as Broad Street, Bloomsbury.
Wye. From the Welsh gwy, water.
Wyndham College. The joint foundation at Oxford of Nicholas and Dorothy Wyndham of Edge and Merefield, Somersetshire, in 1611.
X
X Ale. The original significance of the X mark on beer barrels was that the liquor had paid a ten shilling-duty. Additional X’s are simply brewers’ trade marks, denoting various degrees of strength over that of the first X.
XL’ers. See “[Exellers].”
XXX’s. See “[Three Exes].”