Clackamas

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A river flowing through northwestern Oregon, and the county named after it, also the name of an Indigenous people of that region
2. The name given to an Oregon river and county in the Pacific Northwest, which also refers to a Native American group living there
3. A waterway and county in the state of Oregon, along with the Indigenous community of the Pacific Northwest bearing the same name

Etymology: Clackamas is the name of a people, a river and a county in northern Oregon, and it comes from a Chinookan name for the Native people who lived along that river. The source form, "ɬak'amas", was the Chinookan name for the people of the Clackamas River region. Its underlying forms, "g-i-ɬá-q'imaš" and "g-it-ɬá-q'imaš", show the name built from the Chinookan language's own grammar, which in this case is a description of who lived there rather than a single word for a people. English took the name over from that local usage, so it began as a place-based label and only later came to name the river and county. The word is a proper noun, and that is the only way it is used.