Ostend is a town and a port on the North Sea, in the north-west corner of Belgium. On a map, find Belgium, then the coast that faces England: Ostend sits there with a harbour and a long beach. People go for holidays — to walk by the water, eat, and stay in hotels — so the name turns up in travel talk, not only in history books. For a long time it was a name many people in the UK knew from the ferry. You could drive to the south of England, put the car on a boat, and arrive in Ostend the same day or the next morning, then keep driving into Europe. That is why older British people often know the name even if they have never lived in Belgium. Though actually, far fewer of those ferries run now, so younger learners may never have heard of Ostend until they see it on a map or in an old story. In Dutch, which is spoken there, the same place is Oostende. English keeps the spelling Ostend, always with a capital letter, because it is a place name. A rare English verb looks the same — ostend, “to show” — but that verb comes from Latin and has nothing to do with the Belgian town.

奧斯坦德