Missouri, MO

Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States of America bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska.

Missouri is the eighteenth most populous state and is made up of 114 counties and one independent city. Missouri's capital is Jefferson City and four largest urban areas are, in descending order, St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, and Columbia.

Missouri was originally purchased from France as part of the Louisiana Purchase and part of the Missouri Territory was admitted into the union as the 24th state in 1821.

Missouri mirrors the demographic, economic and political makeup of the nation as a mixture of urban and rural culture and has long been considered a political bellwether state.

It is a state with both Midwestern and Southern cultural influences, reflecting its history as a border state between the two regions.

It is also a blend between the eastern and western United States as St. Louis is often called the "western-most eastern city" and Kansas City the "eastern-most western city."

Missouri's geography is also highly varied, the northern part of the state lies in dissected till plains while the southern part lies in the Ozark Mountains, with the Missouri River dividing the two.

The confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers is located near St. Louis.

Origin of the name

The state is named after the Missouri River which in turn is named after the Siouan Indian tribe whose Illinois name, ouemessourita (wimihsoorita), meaning "those who have dugout canoes".

The etymology lies behind Bob Dyer's tribute, "River of the Big Canoes." The "proper" pronunciation of the final syllable of "Missouri" is a matter of controversy, with significant numbers insisting on a relatively tense vowel (as in "meet") or lax ("mitt" or "mutt"); the most thorough study of the question was done by dialectologist Donald Max Lance.

From a linguistic point of view, there is no "correct" pronunciation, but rather, patterns of synchronic and diachronic variation according to such divisions as geography, age, education, rural/urban location.

Geography

Missouri's borders physically touch a total of eight different states, as does its neighbor, Tennessee.

No state in the U.S. touches more than eight states. Missouri is bounded on the north by Iowa; on the east, across the Mississippi River, by Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee; on the south by Arkansas; and on the west by Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska (the latter across the Missouri River.)

The two largest Missouri rivers are the Mississippi which defines the eastern boundary of the state and the Missouri that flows west to east through the state connecting the two largest cities, Kansas City and St. Louis.

Although today the state is usually considered part of the Midwest, Missouri is also occasionally historically considered a Southern state, the institution of slavery in the state contributing in no small part to this.

Residents of cities farther north and the state's large metropolitan areas, including those where most of the state's population resides (Kansas City, St. Louis, Columbia), typically consider themselves Midwestern, while in rural areas and cities farther south (Cape Girardeau, Poplar Bluff, Springfield, and Sikeston), people typically consider themselves more Southern.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Missouri".