Roanoke

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A city in southwestern Virginia in the United States ; a river flowing through Virginia and North Carolina toward the Albemarle Sound ; a small island off North Carolina where England's first American colony was attempted in 1585
2. An independent city located in the Blue Ridge region of Virginia ; a waterway rising in Virginia and crossing into North Carolina ; an island of the Outer Banks where a lost English settlement was founded
3. A Virginia city named for the region's native heritage ; a North Carolina and Virginia river emptying into the Albemarle Sound ; the island site of the mysterious Lost Colony of 1587

Etymology: Roanoke is a place name, and its story begins with a Native American language rather than with English. The name is borrowed from Powhatan, the Algonquian language of the people of coastal Virginia, where "rawrenock" meant "things rubbed smooth by hand." The name was first attached to the island and river region of what is now North Carolina and Virginia, and later spread to other places, most notably the city of Roanoke in Virginia. The word is a descriptive name rather than a coinage with a famous author, and its original sense is concrete: it referred to objects worked smooth through handling, not to a place as such. Over time the word became a proper noun, detached from its literal meaning, and it now refers only to the locations that carry it.