Pennsylvania.
A state of the United States. Capital: Harrisburg. Largest city: Philadelphia.
Meaning & usage
A state of the United States. Capital: Harrisburg. Largest city: Philadelphia.
A former colony of England, from 1681 to 1707, and of Great Britain, from 1707 to 1776, which grew progressively larger before becoming the present state.
The first, and historically largest, now defunct US railroad, a hallmark of the industrial age.
An unincorporated community in Mobile County, Alabama, United States.
A suburb of Exeter, Devon, England (OS grid ref SX9294).
A hamlet in Cold Ashton parish, South Gloucestershire district, Gloucestershire, England (OS grid ref ST7473).
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree English Penn Proto-Indo-European *sel-der.? Latin silva Proto-Indo-European *-nós Proto-Italic *-nos Proto-Italic *-ānos Latin -ānus Latin silvānusder. English sylvan Proto-Indo-European *-(i)yós Proto-Italic *-ijos Proto-Italic *-ios Old Latin -ios Latin -ius Latin -iader. English -ia English Pennsylvania From Penn (“William Penn”) + sylvan (“woods”) + -ia (“land”). On March 4, 1681, Charles II of England granted a land tract to William Penn for the area that now includes Pennsylvania. Penn then founded a colony there as a place of religious freedom for Quakers, and named it for the Latin sylva, silva (“wood”), thus Pennsylvania (“Penn’s woods”). Some propose that the Penn is derived from William’s more respected father, also named William Penn.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.