May 16: Down the precinct

You will be familiar perhaps with the word precinct to mean an area of shops, although it is not used as much as it used to be.

In the village where I grew up there was an area called the Tanyard, which used to be used for leather preparation as the name suggests. This was what would have been the precinct.

The word seems to have been a fairly recent one, and derived from a particular place, and then used more generally. The original seems to have been built in Coventry, this year's City of Culture, following the Second World War. 

This makes it an eponym.

Others include Hoover and Thermos... although Dyson may have challenged the former...

And if you are going to the shop can you get me a Twix...