Wessex

From Middle English Westsex, from Old English Westseaxan (literally “West Saxons”), which stood for both Wessex and its people. The use of Wessex in a modern context for the West Country was popularised by Thomas Hardy, who used the term for his semi-fictional setting based on the region.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈwɛs.ɪks/
• Rhymes: -ɛsɪks

Wessex

1. (historical) One of the seven major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, existing between the 6th and 9th centuries, and comprising most of England south of the Thames.
   • 1894 December – 1895 November, Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], published 1896, →OCLC:

     Grey-stoned and dun-roofed, it stood within hail of the Wessex border, and almost with the tip of one small toe within it, at the northernmost point of the crinkled line along which the leisurely Thames strokes the fields of that ancient kingdom.

2. The West Country (south-west England).
   • 2001, James R. Babb, River Music: A Fly Fisher’s Four Seasons, →ISBN, page 154:

     And I said I’d couch-surfed around Wessex and Wales and had a good time, and the train ride from Devon to Scotland was long and smoky […]

   • 2010 August 19, Clive Aslet, “Crop circles: The mystery that keeps us going round in circles”, in The Daily Telegraph:

     Crop circles are found in other parts of the globe, but not many. The 55 that have been spotted so far this year in Britain – mostly in Wessex – are more than half the total number observed throughout the world.

   • 2022 August 30, “All of south-west of England in drought, says Environment Agency”, in The Guardian:

     The Wessex area – which includes Bristol, Somerset, Dorset, south Gloucestershire and parts of Wiltshire – has been declared in drought status.

• Essex, Sussex