Manoomin

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The edible seed of a wild aquatic grass native to the Great Lakes region, traditionally harvested by Ojibwe peoples from lakes and rivers
2. A nutritious grain harvested from a North American water grass that grows in shallow lakes and slow streams across the northern woodlands
3. Wild rice, the long dark kernels of an indigenous aquatic plant of northern North America, valued as food and central to Anishinaabe tradition

Etymology: Manoomin is the Ojibwe name for wild rice, a grass that grows in shallow lakes and slow rivers across the northern Great Lakes region. The English word was borrowed directly from Ojibwe, and the Ojibwe form descends from a Proto-Algonquian ancestor, "*maθo·mina", which tells us the name is very old, reaching back long before European contact with the grain. English speakers adopted it to distinguish this plant from the Asian rice that was far better known to them. The word has a close relative in Potawatomi, "mnomen", a sister language in the same Algonquian family, and the two forms are doublets: separate borrowings or descendants of one root that ended up looking and sounding somewhat different. The same root also shows up in "Mahnomen", the name of a town in Minnesota, where the word has been preserved in a place name.