Advertisement

Want to remove ads? Log in to see fewer ads, and become a Premium Member to remove all ads.

Origin and history of Iowa

Iowa

organized as a U.S. territory 1838; admitted as a state 1846, named for the river, ultimately from the name of the native people, of the Chiwere branch of the Siouan family; said to be from Dakota ayuxba "sleepy ones," or from an Algonquian language (Bright cites Miami/Illinois /aayohoowia/). On a French map of 1673 it appears as Ouaouiatonon. John Quincy Adams, in his diary entries on the House of Representatives debate on the territorial bill in 1838, writes it Ioway. Related: Iowan.

Advertisement

Want to remove ads? Log in to see fewer ads, and become a Premium Member to remove all ads.

Trends of Iowa

adapted from books.google.com/ngrams/ with a 7-year moving average; ngrams are probably unreliable.

More to explore

derecho
When, years ago, I first called public attention to this kind of straight blows peculiar to Iowa prairies in summer, I named...them provisorily Iowa squalls....[Gustavus Hinrichs, "Tornadoes in Iowa," in Report of the Iowa Weather Service for the Year 1888]...
SWAK
. * * *" This letter was postmarked at Des Moines October 20, 1909, addressed to Carrie Sprague at Jefferson, Iowa, and reached...Manning (a conspiracy-to-lure-women-to-prostitution case), Supreme Court of Iowa, Nov. 16, 1910, reported in Northwestern...
Midwest
Census Bureau, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota...
Peoria
The place name also is found in Oklahoma and Iowa, but it is the Illinois city that has been proverbially regarded as the...Peoria's rivals as embodiment of U.S. small city values and standards include Dubuque, Iowa; Hoboken and Hackensack, N.J....
bootlegger
1885, American English, originally in reference to those who sold illicit liquor in states with strict prohibition laws (Iowa...
delicious
As a name of a type of apple, attested from 1903, first grown by Jesse Hiatt of Iowa, U.S.A....
Des Moines
city in Iowa, U.S., named for French Rivière des Moines, the river that flows past it, which traditionally is derived from...
us
Old English us (cognate with Old Saxon, Old Frisian us, Old Norse, Swedish oss, Dutch ons, German uns), accusative and dative plural of we, from PIE *nes- (2), forming oblique cases of the first person plural personal pronoun (source also of Sanskrit nas, Avestan na, Hittite nash
America
1507, "the western hemisphere, North and South America," in Cartographer Martin Waldseemüller's treatise "Cosmographiae Introductio," from Modern Latin Americanus, traditionally after Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) who made two trips to the New World as a navigator and claimed to h
Sioux
in reference to a family or group of North American native peoples, 1761, from North American French, short for Nadouessioux, sometimes said to be from Ojibway (Algonquian) Natowessiwak (plural), literally "little snakes," from nadowe "Iroquois" ("(big) snakes"). Another explanat

Share Iowa

Advertisement

Want to remove ads? Log in to see fewer ads, and become a Premium Member to remove all ads.

Trending
Dictionary entries near Iowa
Advertisement

Want to remove ads? Log in to see fewer ads, and become a Premium Member to remove all ads.

Want to remove ads? Log in to see fewer ads, and become a Premium Member to remove all ads.