From French Vichy, from Occitan Vichèi, phonetically evolved from the Latin place name Vippiacus, itself named after an agricultural field belonging to a farmer named Vippius. An alternate theory attributes the name to the Latin vicus calidus, meaning "warm settlement."
Meanings
(abbreviation, alt-of, colloquial, ellipsis) Ellipsis of Vichy water.
From French Vichy, from Occitan Vichèi, phonetically evolved from the Latin place name Vippiacus, itself named after an agricultural field belonging to a farmer named Vippius. An alternate theory attributes the name to the Latin vicus calidus, meaning "warm settlement."
Meanings
A town in Allier department, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, France; the capital of Vichy France during World War II.
(figuratively, historical, metonymically) A town in Allier department, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, France; the capital of Vichy France during World War II. ▸ Vichy France; the Vichy French government.
(attributive, derogatory) Labelling a regime that is traitorous or established in cooperation with a foreign or hostile power, especially in administration of occupied territory.
In 1940, having shunned German overtures for him to serve in the government of a future “Vichy Russia,” he fled to southern France to escape the Nazi invasion. 2015, Jonathan D. Smele, “Miliukov, Pavel Nikolaevich”, in Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916–1926, →ISBN, page 755:
"There is not going to be a Vichy Ukraine," former U.S. Ukraine Ambassador John Herbst told the Post. 2022 March 2, Peter Weber, “U.S. and Britain reportedly believe the Ukraine war could last 10-20 years, become a Russian quagmire”, in The Week:
More recently, a succession of novels, including Robert Harris's Fatherland, Resistance by Owen Sheers and CJ Sansom's Dominion – which imagines a Vichy Britain in 1952 ruled by Lord Beaverbrook and Oswald Mosley – have explored the same theme. 2013 December 25, Martin Kettle, “What if the Germans had won the first world war?”, in The Guardian: