cathay

cathay is defined in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913) with 1 sense. The full text of each entry is reproduced verbatim below.

Definitions

  1. 1.China; -- an old name for the Celestial Empire, said have been introduced by Marco Polo and to be a corruption of the Tartar name for North China (Khitai, the country of the Khitans.) Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. Tennyson.

Source: Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain, via GCIDE / Project Gutenberg).

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