Why does illinois have an s at the end

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Louis O'Fallon. Show More. Cookies Policy We and our partners use cookies to better understand your needs, improve performance and provide you with personalised content and advertisements. In the case of Kansas , the last s is, for some unbeknownst reason, pronounced; the state of Kansas, like Arkansas, was also formerly a French territory.

Etymologists are not certain of the meanings of Acansa and Kansa in the native languages. The name Acansa was used by the Illinois to refer to the Quapaw tribe. The Quapaw whose name translates as "downstream people" lived near the mouth of the Arkansas River, and they did not use the name themselves, and it is doubtful that it was a complimentary epithet.

The Quapaw were also given the name Ozark , a likely derivation of French Aux Arcs , the name of a French post among the Quapaw that is a shortening of aux Arkansas meaning "at the Quapaw".

The pronunciation of Missouri —a word that is derived from French and Native American Illinois and that originally meant "owners of big canoes"—depends on whether you're a resident of the state as well as where your residency is.

A similar residential phenomenon occurs in the name of the city of Cincinnati in Ohio. The populace pronounce the i in Missouri as a long e. We recognize both pronunciations as acceptable. Sometimes you hear people pronounce the state of Hawaii as if the w was a v —and there is a phonetic reason for this. In the Hawaiian language, the letter w has multiple pronunciations.

The reversed apostrophe in the variant spelling Hawai'i signals a glottal stop , which is the sound produced by a momentary catching and sudden release of air flow at the back of the throat. For example, it is the sound one makes between the vowels of the interjection uh-oh. Mississippi is of Algonquian origin, and it is akin to Misisipi , an Ojibwa compound of misi , meaning "big," and sipi , "river"—and the Mississippi River is undeniably big.

If that doesn't work, think twos and fours—that is, it has 2 pairs of s 's, 2 p 's, and 4 i 's. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Log in Sign Up. State Names Or, here's the reason some of them look and sound that way.

Photo: Welles Enterprises. The plural suffix -s is pronounced in English but not in French, and the French settlers of the Arkansas territory would not have pronounced it in the territory's name, which was recognized later by the state in Be it therefore resolved by both Houses of the General Assembly, That the only true pronunciation of the name of the State, in the opinion of this body, is that received by the French word representing the sound; and that it should be pronounced in three syllables, with the final "s" silent.

Photo: jmoor More Words At Play. Merriam-Webster's Words of the Week - Oct. Merriam-Webster's Words of the Week - Nov. Time Traveler. Love words? Need even more definitions? Ask the Editors 'Everyday' vs.