Word.ws English Dictionary

Peterloo

Peterloo proper noun: the events of 16 August 1819, when cavalry charged into a large crowd that had gathered in St Peter's Field, Manchester, England, to demand the reform of parliamentary representation, killing fifteen and injuring hundreds more.

Proper noun

Peterloo

  1. (historical) The events of 16 August 1819, when cavalry charged into a large crowd that had gathered in St Peter's Field, Manchester, England, to demand the reform of parliamentary representation, killing fifteen and injuring hundreds more.

Origin of Peterloo

Blend of Peter + Waterloo, in an ironic comparison to the Battle of Waterloo, which had taken place four years earlier.

Questions about Peterloo

What does Peterloo mean?
Peterloo means the events of 16 August 1819, when cavalry charged into a large crowd that had gathered in St Peter's Field, Manchester, England, to demand the reform of parliamentary representation, killing fifteen and injuring hundreds more.
What part of speech is Peterloo?
Peterloo is a proper noun.

Words near Peterloo in the dictionary

  1. petering out
  2. Peterka
  3. Peterkas
  4. Peterkin
  5. Peterlee
  6. Peterloo
  7. peterman
  8. Petermann
  9. Petermanns
  10. Petermans
  11. petermen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Peterloo (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Peterloo.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/peterloo. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.