Mississaugas

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The Anishinaabe peoples who historically lived along the north shore of Lake Ontario and the rivers flowing into it, in what is now Canada
2. Members of an Ojibwe-speaking First Nation whose ancestral lands surrounded the western end of Lake Ontario and nearby waterways
3. Indigenous communities of the Mississauga nation, original inhabitants of territory around present-day Toronto and the Credit River region

Etymology: The name belongs to an Ojibwe-speaking nation whose name was first recorded in French, and its meaning is tied to a place. The Ojibwe word "misizaagii" refers to someone living at the mouth of a large river. French speakers adapted it as "Mississague," and English later took the form "Mississauga." The name points to the area where the Mississauga River drains into Lake Huron, so the people were named for their homeland rather than the other way round. The plural "Mississaugas" is simply the regular English plural of "Mississauga," used when referring to the members of the nation as a group. Another word shares this history: "massasauga," the name of a small rattlesnake of the Great Lakes region, is a doublet of "Mississauga," meaning the two words descend from the same source by separate routes.