Kennebec

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A river flowing through western Maine into the Atlantic Ocean near Bath ; a white-skinned potato variety with a floury texture, widely grown in North America
2. A major waterway in the state of Maine that empties into the Gulf of Maine ; an oval, white-fleshed potato cultivar prized for baking and frying
3. A Maine river that rises in the northwestern part of the state ; a late-maturing potato type with pale skin, grown mainly for processing and cooking

Etymology: The Kennebec River runs about 150 miles through western Maine before reaching the Atlantic near Bath, and its name comes from the Abenaki language, the Algonquian tongue of the people who lived along its banks. The word is generally understood to be an adaptation of an Abenaki place name, though the exact meaning of the original form is not something to lean on with confidence. European settlers recorded it in various spellings, and the modern form took shape through that English rendering rather than through any European root. The potato took the name by way of the river. The variety was developed in the Kennebec region of Maine, and farmers and seed dealers there gave the tuber the name of the valley it came from, so the same word now labels both a waterway and a pale, floury kind of potato grown across North America.