Word.ws English Dictionary

Wellesley

/ˈwɛlɪzli/

Wellesley proper noun: an English surname. Also the ellipsis of Wellesley College.

Proper noun

Wellesley

  1. An English surname.
  2. A town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts; named for the estate of local benefactor Horatio Hollis Hunnewell
  3. A township in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Also used as

Wellesley is also the ellipsis of Wellesley College.

Forms of Wellesley

alternative formWellersley
alternative formWellsley

Origin of Wellesley

From the name of the town Wells (“springs”) + lēah (“woodland”), thus 'the woodland by the springs'.

Words formed from Wellesley

Questions about Wellesley

What does Wellesley mean?
Wellesley means an English surname.
What part of speech is Wellesley?
Wellesley is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Wellesley?
Wellesley is pronounced /ˈwɛlɪzli/.

Words near Wellesley in the dictionary

  1. wellerisms
  2. Welles
  3. Wellesbourne
  4. Wellesbourne and Walton
  5. Wellesian
  6. Wellesley
  7. Wellesley effect
  8. Wellesley Hills
  9. Wellesleyan
  10. wellest
  11. welleth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Wellesley (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Wellesley.wav.

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