Brigadoon

English

Etymology

After the village in the 1947 musical of the same name, written by Alan Jay Lerner. That village appears for only one day every hundred years. The name of the village is taken from the Brig o' Doon mediaeval bridge, in Ayrshire, Scotland.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -uːn

Noun

Brigadoon (plural Brigadoons)

1. A place that seems magically transient.
   • 1985, Mike Scott (lyrics and music), “The Whole of the Moon”, in This Is The Sea, performed by The Waterboys:

     I saw the rain dirty valley / You saw Brigadoon

   • 1988 July, Cruise Travel, volume 10, number 1, page 46:

     A mile walk took us into Mountshannon, a sort of Brigadoon, so quiet in the warm sun we thought it deserted.

   • 2003, George Howe Colt, The big house: a century in the life of an American summer home:

     But low tide allowed us to walk on tiptoes along an underwater sandbar, and explore the tide pools, miniature maritime Brigadoons in which we'd find crabs...

Derived terms

• Brigadoonery
• Brigadoonish