Jamaica.
[_Oriol_, or _Oriel_, is a portico or court; also a small room near the
hall in monasteries, where particular persons dined. (Blount's
_Glossog._) Du Cange says, "_Oriolum_, porticus, atrium;" and quotes
Matthew Paris for it. Supposed by some to be a diminutive from _area_
or _areola_. "In modern writings," says Nares, "we meet with mention of
_Oriel_ windows. I doubt the propriety of the expression; but, if
right, they must mean those windows that project like a porch, or small
room. At St. Albans was an _oriel_, or apartment for persons not so
sick as to retire to the infirmary. (Fosbroke's _Brit. Monachism_, vol.
ii. p. 160.) I may be wrong in my notion of _oriel_ window, but I have
not met with ancient authority for that expression. Cowel conjectured
that _Oriel_ College, in Oxford, took its name from some such room or
portico. There is a remarkable portico, in the farther side of the
first quadrangle, but not old enough to have given the name. It might,
however, be only the successor of one more ancient, and more exactly an
_oriel_." For articles on the disputed derivation of this term, which
seems involved in obscurity, see Parker's _Glossary of Architecture_; a
curious paper by Mr. Hamper, in _Archaeologia_, vol. xxiii.; and
_Gentleman's Magazine_ for Nov. 1823, p. 424., and March, 1824, p.
229.]
"_Orchard._"--Professor Martyn, in his Notes on Virgil's _Georgics_, seems
to be of opinion that the English word "orchard" is derived from the Greek
[Greek: orchatos], which Homer uses to express the garden of Alcinous; and
he observes that Milton writes it _orchat_, thereby corroborating this
impression. Is the word spelt according to Milton's form by any other
writers?