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Definition: Midwestern |
MidwesternAdjective1. Of a region of the United States generally including Ohio; Indiana; Illinois; Iowa; Missouri; Kansas; Nebraska; and sometimes Michigan; Wisconsin; Minnesota; "a midwestern city"; "midwestern accent". Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "midwestern" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1980. (references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The block of states colored salmon (ND to OH)
on this map is the Midwest.The Midwest is a common, unofficial name for a region of the United States of America. It originally referred to States subject to the Northwest Ordinances of the 1780s and has since been extended further westward across the Grain Belt into the Great Plains.
In spite of its frequent usage, the name Midwest is somewhat out-of-date. In the early years of the country, the vast majority of the population lived east of the Appalachian Mountains, but the country's borders stretched west all the way to the Rocky Mountains. The vast region west of the Appalachians was divided into the Far West (now just the West), and the Middle West.
These States are characterized as being relatively flat, heavily developed into urbanized areas or agriculture, and demarcated by the surveyor's grid imposed by the ordinances.
The states include:
Among the westernmost States listed, residents of the eastern agricultural areas generally consider themselves part of the Midwest, while residents of the remaining ranching areas usually do not. Of course, exact boundaries are nebulous and shifting.
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas (eastern part)
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Missouri
- Nebraska (eastern part)
- North Dakota (eastern part)
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania (western part)
- South Dakota (eastern part)
- Wisconsin
The region's hub is Chicago, the nation's third largest city. This major Great Lakes port is a connecting point for rail lines and air traffic to far-flung parts of the nation and the world.
History
The Midwest is a cultural crossroads. Starting in the early 1800s, easterners moved there in search of better farmland, and soon European immigrants bypassed the East Coast to settle directly in the interior: Germanss to eastern Missouri, Swedes and Norwegians to Wisconsin and Minnesota. The region's fertile soil made it possible for farmers to produce abundant harvests of cereal crops such as corn, oats, and, most importantly, wheat. The region was soon known as the nation's "breadbasket."
Two waterways have been important to the Midwest's development. The first and foremost is the Mississippi River, flowing south from Minnesota to Louisiana, and its tributaries (particularly the Ohio River, flowing southwest from Pennsylvania to Missouri). Spanish control of the southern part of the Mississippi, and refusal to allow the shipment of American crops down the river and into the Atlantic Ocean, halted the development of the region until 1795. The river inspired two classic American books written by a native Missourian, Samuel Clemens, who took the pseudonym Mark Twain: Life on the Mississippi and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The second waterway is the Great Lakes. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 completed an all-water shipping route, more direct than the Mississippi, to New York and the seaport of New York City. Lakeport cities grew up to handle this new shipping route. During the Industrial Revolution, the lakes became a conduit for iron ore from the Mesabi Range of Minnesota to steel mills in the Mid-Atlantic States. Te Saint Lawrence Seaway later opened the Midwest to the Atlanic Ocean.
Midwesterners are alternately praised as open, friendly, and straightforward, or steroetyped as unsophisticated and stubborn. Their politics tend to be cautious, but the caution is sometimes peppered with protest. The Midwest gave birth to one of America's two major political parties, the Republican Party, which was formed in the 1850s to oppose the spread of slavery into new States. The rural Midwest is a Republican stronghold to this day. Around the turn of the 20th century, the region also spawned the Populist Movement and later the Progressive Movement, which largely consisted of farmers and merchants intent on making government less corrupt and more receptive to the will of the people. Perhaps because of their geographic location, many Midwesterners have been strong adherents of isolationism, the belief that Americans should not concern themselves with foreign wars and problems.
Related topics
- Midwestern cuisine
- The West
- The Southwest
- Mid-Atlantic States
- New England
- The South
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Midwest."
Crosswords: Midwestern |
| English words defined with "midwestern": Badger State, Buckeye State ♦ Corn Belt, Cornhusker State ♦ Gopher State, Great Lakes State ♦ Hawkeye State, Hoosier State ♦ I.Q., IA, in, Indiana, Iowa ♦ Kansas, KS ♦ MI, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mn, Mo ♦ Ne, Nebraska, North Star State, Nyssa aquatica ♦ OH, Ohio ♦ Parus bicolor ♦ Show Me State, Sunflower State ♦ tufted titmouse ♦ water gum, WI, Wisconsin, Wolverine State. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "midwestern": Emergency Wetlands Reserve Program ♦ Midwestern United States. (references) |
| Domain | Title | ||
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Periodicals |
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Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Columbia System and Red Cross staff working on the drought program over Columbia System Saturday evening, Jan. 31, 1931. Station KLRA, Little Rock, Ark. Left to right: Dillon, assistant director, P.I. Midwestern Br. office; Vensonhaler, Mgr., of Station K. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | A part of the shop in a Midwestern company which has converted its machines and trained labor forces from the manufacture of motors and fans to the manufacture of twenty-millimeter shell booster parts. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Conversion. Farm implements to cargo winches. Grinding a crankshaft for a farm tractor engine in a large Midwestern implement plant before the machine was converted to the grinding of axles for marine cargo winches. Credit: Library of Congress. | ||
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
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| "Country Road" by Paige Foster Commentary: "An aging billboard in the distance, next to a midwestern country road." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | Historically, most cases of LAC encephalitis occur in the upper Midwestern states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio). (references) | |
The white-footed mouse is found through southern New England, the Mid-Atlantic and southern states, the midwestern and western states, and Mexico. (references) | ||
La Crosse (LAC) encephalitis was discovered in La Crosse, Wisconsin in 1963. Since then, the virus has been identified in several Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic states. (references) | ||
Economic History | Nepal | In the Midwestern districts of Rolpa, Rukum, Jajarkot, Salyan and Gorkha foreigners, and particularly aid workers, have been threatened, and there have been several incidents of Maoist insurgents attacking establishments of NGOs and INGOs working in different parts of Nepal. (references) |
Human Rights | Nepal | Maoists also have targeted aircraft attempting to make humanitarian deliveries of foodstuffs to midwestern districts. (references) |
Travel | Nepal | A violent Maoist insurgency, which was initially isolated in the Midwestern districts of Nepal, has spread to many other parts of the country and created a serious security threat. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Midwestern" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Midwestern" is used about 17 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 |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 100% | 17 | 85,106 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "midwestern": Midwestern United States. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "midwestern"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Russian | среднезападный, относящийся к Среднему Западу. (various references) | |
Spanish | del mediooeste. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "midwestern" (pronounced mudwe"stern) |
| 6 | -w e" s t er n | northwestern, southwestern, western. |
| 4 | -s t er n | cistern, eastern, northeastern, southeastern. |
| 3 | -t er n | intern, lantern, lectern, pattern. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "d-e-e-i-m-n-r-s-t-w" | |
-2 letters: demerits, dimeters, inserted, misenter, nerdiest, reminted, resident, rewidens, sediment, sintered, trendies, weirdest, wideners, wintered. | |
-3 letters: dements, demerit, deniers, destine, dewiest, diester, dieters, dimeter, emetins, endites, endwise, entires, entries, ermined, ermines, menders, merited, metiers, minders, mindset, minster, minters, misdrew, mistend, mitered, nereids, newsier, reedits, reemits, remends, reminds, remints, remised, resined, resited, retimed, retimes. | |
| Words containing the letters "d-e-e-i-m-n-r-s-t-w" | |
+1 letter: wilderments. | |
+3 letters: bewilderments. | |
| 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. Crosswords 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Images: Photo Album | 5. Images: Digital Art 6. Quotations: Non-fiction 7. Usage Frequency 8. Expressions | 9. Expressions: Internet 10. Translations: Modern 11. Rhymes 12. Anagrams | 13. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
