Shreveport

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A city in northwestern Louisiana on the Red River, near the borders of Texas and Arkansas
2. A river port city located in the northwest of the state of Louisiana in the southern United States
3. An American city in the northwestern corner of Louisiana, situated along the Red River near the Texas state line

Etymology: Shreveport is a city in northwestern Louisiana, named after Henry Miller Shreve, a steamboat captain who in the 1830s cleared the Great Raft, a massive logjam on the Red River that had blocked navigation for centuries. The city was founded in 1836 as a river port, and its name simply honors the man whose work opened the river to traffic. Shreve himself had earlier been known for designing a steamboat hull suited to shallow western rivers, so the name fits a place built on river commerce. The "port" in the name is a plain English word, not a French or Spanish borrowing, and it reflects the city's original purpose. Shreve and his partners laid out the town as a landing for steamboats hauling cotton and goods, and the combination of a surname and a commercial term is typical of American towns founded in the steamboat era.