Mississippian
noun · first attested 1870
Named for the river, not the state: the reference is to limestone bluffs a long way upstream of Mississippi.
The earlier subperiod of the Carboniferous, about 359 to 323 million years ago.
Mississippi River·United States
47.2397°N -95.2075°W · Q1497
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
- Attested
- 1870
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Mississippi River
- In English
Mississippian
Alexander Winchell proposed the name in 1870 for the thick lower Carboniferous limestones exposed along the upper Mississippi valley in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri. Henry Shaler Williams added the Pennsylvanian above it in 1891. The river's own name comes from Ojibwe misi-ziibi, great river, so a period of earth history is ultimately labeled in an Algonquian language.