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Definition: Appalachians |
AppalachiansNoun1. A mountain range in the eastern United States extending from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico; a historic barrier to early westward expansion of the United States. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "Appalachians" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1865. (references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The Appalachian Mountains are a system of North American mountains running from Quebec, Canada to Alabama in the United States. The system is divided into a series of ranges, with the individual mountains averaging around 3000 ft. The highest of the group are Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina (6,684 ft.), the highest point in the United States east of the Mississippi River, and Mt. Washington (6,288 ft.) in New Hampshire.
Regions
The major ranges comprising the Appalachian system include the Notre Dame Mountains in Quebec, the Longfellow Mountains in Maine, the White Mountains in New Hampshire, the Green Mountains in Vermont, the Taconic Mountains in Vermont and Massachusetts, the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts, the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia, and the Blue Ridge Mountains that run from southern Pennsylvania to North Georgia. South of New York, the mountains are loosely organized into two large plateau regions, the Allegheny Plateau in western Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia, and the Cumberland Plateau in southern West Virginia, western Virginia, eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. On the eastern and southeastern fringe of the plateau areas lies a ridge and valley province of elongated, parallel ridges, including the Blue Ridge.
These mountains are a geographical boundary between the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and the Midwestern regions of the country. The territory of Great Britain's thirteen original colonies in North America extended as far west as the summit line of the mountains (except in the northern regions where the Great Lakes formed the boundary). With the formation of the United States, an important first phase of westward expansion in the late 18th century and early 19th century consisted of the migration of European-descended settlers westward across the mountains into the Ohio Valley through the Cumberland Gap and other mountain passes.
The Appalachian Trail is a 2,160 mile hiking trail that runs all the way from Mt. Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia, passing over or past a large part of the Appalachian system.
Geology
The Appalachians are old mountains. A look at rocks exposed in today's Appalachian mountains reveals elongated belts of folded and thrust faulted marine sedimentary rocks, volcanic rocks and slivers of ancient ocean floor, which provides strong evidence that these rocks were deformed during plate collision. The birth of the Appalachian ranges, some 480 million years ago, marks the first of several mountain building plate collisions that culminated in the construction of the supercontinent Pangea with the Appalachians near the center.
During the middle Ordovician Period (about 440-480 million years ago), a change in plate motions set the stage for the first Paleozoic mountain building event (Taconic orogeny) in North America. The once quiet, Appalachian passive margin changed to a very active plate boundary when a neighboring oceanic plate, the Iapetus, collided with and began sinking beneath the North American craton. With the birth of this new subduction zone, the early Appalachians were born. Along the continental margin, volcanoes grew, coincident with the initiation of subduction. Thrust faulting uplifted and warped older sedimentary rock laid down on the passive margin. As mountains rose, erosion began to wear them down. Streams carried rock debris downslope to be deposited in nearby lowlands. The Taconic Orogeny was just the first of a series of mountain building plate collisions that contributed to the formation of the Appalachians.
By the end of the Mesozoic era, the Appalachian Mountains had been eroded to an almost flat plain. It was not until the region was uplifted during the Cenozoic Era that the distinctive topography of the present formed. Uplift rejuvenated the streams, which rapidly responded by cutting downward into the ancient bedrock. Some streams flowed along weak layers that define the folds and faults created many millions of years earlier. Other streams downcut so rapidly that they cut right across the resistant folded rocks of the mountain core, carving canyons across rock layers and geologic structures.
See also: Appalachian Trail, Appalachia
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Appalachian Mountains."
Synonym: AppalachiansSynonym: Appalachian Mountains (n). (additional references) |
Crosswords: Appalachians |
| English words defined with "Appalachians": Blue Ridge, Blue Ridge Mountains ♦ Catskill Mountains, Catskills, Cumberland Mountains, Cumberland Plateau ♦ Great Smoky Mountains. (references) |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
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| "American Flag over Chimney Roc" by William J. Ray Commentary: "Took this while hiking above Chimney Rock in the beautiful Appalachians of North Carolina." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. |
| "Appalachians" is generally used as a noun (proper) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Appalachians" is used about 14 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (proper) | 100% | 14 | 93,893 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| Language | Translations for "Appalachians"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | Apalashet. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | Апалачи. (various references) | |
Chinese | 阿巴拉契亚人 (Appalachian). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | アパラチア山脈 (apartheid, Appalachian mountains). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | アパラチアさんみゃく (Appalachian mountains). (various references) | |
Korean | 애팔래치아 지방 사람 (Appalachian). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | appalachiansay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | apalaches. (various references) | |
Russian | Аппалачи (Appalachian Mountains). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | apalačani. (various references) | |
Spanish | Apalaches. (various references) | |
Swedish | Appalacherna. (various references) | |
Turkish | Apalaş Dğlr.. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Misspellings | |
"Appalachians" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Apelaciones, appalachains. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-a-a-c-h-i-l-n-p-p-s" | |
-3 letters: achalasia, anaphasic, anaplasia, chaplains. | |
-4 letters: acapnias, aphasiac, calipash, chaplain, paphians, pashalic. | |
-5 letters: acapnia, alpacas, aphasia, aphasic, apicals, aplasia, caliphs, caplins, inclasp, paisana, palship, papains, paphian, paschal, planish, salpian, sapphic, shiplap, spacial, spinach. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Digital Art 6. Usage Frequency 7. Translations: Modern 8. Derivations | 9. Anagrams 10. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
