Androscoggin

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A river flowing through Maine and New Hampshire into the Kennebec ; a county in the state of Maine ; a Native American people who lived in the region
2. A waterway in northern New England that empties into the Kennebec River ; an administrative district in Maine ; an Indigenous nation of the surrounding area
3. The river of Maine and New Hampshire that joins the Kennebec ; the Maine county named after that river ; the Indigenous people historically living along its banks

Etymology: Androscoggin is a river in Maine and New Hampshire, and its name is an Algonquian word that English speakers have mangled in many ways over the centuries. The name is generally understood to come from a Native term recorded by early colonists, often glossed as something like "fish-curing place" or "place where fish are dried," reflecting the importance of the river's fisheries to the people who lived along it. Early European records show the name in a range of spellings, including forms closer to "Amarascoggin" and "Androscoggin," and the spelling settled only gradually. The precise original Algonquian word and its exact meaning are not firmly established, so the gloss above should be read as a likely interpretation rather than settled fact. The English-language form took shape in the colonial period, when settlers recorded the name in deeds and maps of the Maine and New Hampshire frontier.