Anglo-Ind. [Of disputed origin, but referred by Yule and Burnell, on weighty evidence, to Malay kampong, kampung (in Du. orthog. kampoeng) ‘enclosure, space fenced in’; also ‘village, quarter of a town occupied by a particular nationality,’ as the ‘Chinese kampong’ at Batavia. In this latter sense, campon occurs in a Pg. writer of 1613.
Earlier conjectures were that it was a corruption of Pg. campanha or F. campagne country, or of Pg. campo field, camp. See Yule, Anglo-Ind. Gloss., s.v.]
The enclosure within which a residence or factory (of Europeans) stands, in India, China, and the East generally.
Supposed by Yule and Burnell to have been first used by Englishmen in the early factories in the Malay Archipelago, and to have been thence carried by them to peninsular India on the one hand and China on the other. In later times, it has been taken to Madagascar, East and West Africa, Polynesia, and other regions where Englishmen have penetrated, and has been applied by travelers to the similar enclosures round native houses.
1679. Fort St. Geo. Consns., 14 April (Yule). There the Dutch have a Factory of a large Compounde.
1696. Bowyear, Jrnl. Cochin China, 30 April (Y.). Their custom-houses of which there are three, in a square Compound of about 100 Paces over each way.
1763. Verelst, Transl. fr. Persian, in Phil. Trans., LIII. 267. Ali Chowdry’s compound opened [from an Earthquake], and the water … filled a deep ditch, that surrounded his house.
1781. India Gaz., 3 March (Y.). Godown usurps the ware-house place, Compound denotes each walled space.
1816. ‘Quiz,’ Grand Master, VIII. 232. He chang’d his course, and soon he found The way into his own compound.
a. 1847. Mrs. Sherwood, Lady of Manor, I. iv. 79. Pretty thatched cottages standing in little compounds, or yards, hedged round with a kind of prickly fence.
1857. Livingstone, Trav., xvii. 314. He had made the walls of his compound, or courtyard.
1884. C. T. Buckland, Soc. Life India, iii. 51. All the factory-buildings usually stand in one compound … and this is in size almost equal to a small park.
