Tulsa

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A city in northeastern Oklahoma, in the central United States, known for its oil industry and Art Deco architecture
2. The second-largest city in Oklahoma, located in the northeastern part of the state along the Arkansas River
3. A major city in the northeastern region of Oklahoma that grew rapidly as a center of the oil business

Etymology: Tulsa, Oklahoma, takes its name from a Creek town. The Muscogee (Creek) word "Tallasi" means "old town," and it was the name of a Creek settlement on the Tallapoosa River in Alabama, the town from which the Creek migrants who founded the Oklahoma settlement took their name. The same or a closely similar root lies behind Tallahassee, the Florida capital, which is a useful clue that the name spread with the Creek people as they moved. The name was carried west when the Creek were forced out of the Southeast in the 1830s, during the removal that followed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Creek families rebuilt their communities along the Arkansas River in what became Indian Territory, and the new settlement kept the old name, a reminder of the homeland they had left behind. The word's meaning was therefore not a description of the place's appearance but a memory of where the people had come from.