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COPYRIGHT 2007 Worldwatch Institute
Overview
An early 18th century English dictionary defines an umbrella as a "screen commonly used by women to keep off rain." Men too, of course, shelter from downpours under umbrellas, but the devices were invented--as long ago as 1400 BCE in China and Egypt--as protection from the sun, mainly for nobility. The Latin root of umbrella, umbra, means shade.
In medieval Europe, clergy were occasionally spotted with umbrellas, but it wasn't until the 1500s that European women of fashion began to carry them. Their use became...
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