Golʹgotha

signifies a skull, and corresponds to the French word chaumont. Probably it designated a bare hill or rising ground, having some fanciful resemblance to the form of a bald skull.

“Golgotha seems not entirely unconnected with the hill of Gareb, and the locality of Goath, mentioned in Jeremiah xxxi. 39, on the north-west of the city. I am inclined to fix the place where Jesus was crucified … on the mounds which command the valley of Hinnom, above Birket-Mamila.”—Renan: Life of Jesus, chap. xxv.

Golgotha, at the University church, Cambridge, was the gallery in which the “heads of the houses” sat; so called because it was the place of skulls or heads. It has been more wittily than truly said that Golgotha was the place of empty skulls.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.