Roraima

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A flat-topped tepui mountain on the border of Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana ; a plant genus found on the slopes of that highland region ; a Venezuelan state named after the mountain
2. A table-like sandstone peak in northern South America where Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana meet ; a group of plants native to that highland area ; a Venezuelan federal state that takes its name from the peak
3. The famous flat-topped mountain straddling the borders of three countries in northern South America ; a botanical genus growing on that plateau ; a Venezuelan state bearing the mountain's name

Etymology: Roraima is the name of a flat-topped tepui, a sandstone table mountain on the border of Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana, and the word began as a description of a place rather than a label chosen for it. It comes from Pemon, the language of the indigenous peoples of the region, where "Roroimü" combined "rora", meaning "green, blue, or grue" (a colour term that covers the blue-green shades of distant hills and the grey-green of cloud), with "-imü", an augmentative suffix that makes a noun mean something large or great. The name thus means roughly "great blue-green thing" or "great mountain of colour," a description a traveller would grasp at once from the plains below. The Pemon word passed into Portuguese as "Roraima," and from there it entered English as the name of the mountain. Its sound has stayed close to the original, so the name carries the shape of the Pemon speakers' own description of the peak.