Meanings
Vichy1
- A town in Allier department, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, France; the capital of Vichy France during World War II.
- figurativelyhistoricalmetonymicallyVichy France; the Vichy French government.
- abbreviationcolloquialellipsisEllipsis of Vichy water.
Vichy2
- attributivederogatoryLabelling a regime that is traitorous or established in cooperation with a foreign or hostile power, especially in administration of occupied territory.
"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 Week2 more examples
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 GuardianIn 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
Synonyms & antonyms
Origin
Vichy · proper noun, noun
- OccitanVichèi
- FrenchVichy
- EnglishVichy
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."
More words from French, Occitan
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Arabic فِيشِي
- فِيشِي (fīšī)town
Chinese Mandarin 維希 /维希
- 維希 /维希 (Wéixī)town
French Vichy
- Vichytown
Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with Vichy
All rhymes →Cite this entry
Vichy. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Vichy
“Vichy.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Vichy. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Vichy,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Vichy.
Source: Vichy on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.