MASSACHUSETTS

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Massachusetts mean? 

• MASSACHUSETTS (noun)
  The noun MASSACHUSETTS has 4 senses:

1. a state in New England; one of the original 13 colonies

2. a member of the Algonquian people who formerly lived around Massachusetts Bay

3. one of the British colonies that formed the United States

4. the Algonquian language of the Massachuset

  Familiarity information: MASSACHUSETTS used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MASSACHUSETTS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A state in New England; one of the original 13 colonies

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

Bay State; MA; Mass.; Massachusetts; Old Colony

Instance hypernyms:

American state (one of the 50 states of the United States)

Meronyms (parts of "Massachusetts"):

Taconic Mountains (a range of the Appalachian Mountains along the eastern border of New York with Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont)

Merrimack; Merrimack River (a river that rises in south central New Hampshire and flows through Concord and Manchester into Massachusetts and empties into the Atlantic Ocean)

Housatonic; Housatonic River (a river that rises in western Massachusetts and flows south through Connecticut to empty into Long Island Sound)

Charles; Charles River (a river in eastern Massachusetts that empties into Boston Harbor and that separates Cambridge from Boston)

Berkshire Hills; Berkshires (a low mountain range in western Massachusetts; a resort area)

Williamstown (a town in northwestern Massachusetts)

Salem (a city in northeastern Massachusetts; site of the witchcraft trials in 1692)

Plymouth (a town in Massachusetts founded by Pilgrims in 1620)

Cape Cod Canal (a canal connecting Cape Cod Bay with Buzzards Bay)

Cape Cod (a Massachusetts peninsula to the south of Boston extending into the Atlantic; a popular resort area)

Cape Ann (a Massachusetts peninsula to the north of Boston extending into the Atlantic Ocean)

Worcester (an industrial and university city in central Massachusetts to the west of Boston)

Springfield (a city and manufacturing center in southwestern Massachusetts on the Connecticut River)

Pittsfield (a town in western Massachusetts)

Medford (town in northeastern Massachusetts; residential suburb of Boston)

Lexington (town in eastern Massachusetts near Boston where the first battle of the American Revolution was fought)

Gloucester (a town in northeastern Massachusetts on Cape Ann to the northeast of Boston; the harbor has been a fishing center for centuries)

Concord (town in eastern Massachusetts near Boston where the first battle of the American Revolution was fought)

Cambridge (a city in Massachusetts just to the north of Boston; site of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Bean Town; Beantown; Boston; capital of Massachusetts; Hub of the Universe (state capital and largest city of Massachusetts; a major center for banking and financial services)

Domain member region:

Concord; Lexington; Lexington and Concord (the first battle of the American Revolution (April 19, 1775))

Holonyms ("Massachusetts" is a part of...):

America; the States; U.S.; U.S.A.; United States; United States of America; US; USA (North American republic containing 50 states - 48 conterminous states in North America plus Alaska in northwest North America and the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean; achieved independence in 1776)

New England (a region of northeastern United States comprising Maine and New Hampshire and Vermont and Massachusetts and Rhode Island and Connecticut)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A member of the Algonquian people who formerly lived around Massachusetts Bay

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

Massachuset; Massachusetts

Hypernyms ("Massachusetts" is a kind of...):

Algonquian; Algonquin (a member of any of the North American Indian groups speaking an Algonquian language and originally living in the subarctic regions of eastern Canada; many Algonquian tribes migrated south into the woodlands from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic coast)

Sense 3

Meaning:

One of the British colonies that formed the United States

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

Massachusetts; Massachusetts Bay Colony

Instance hypernyms:

Colony (one of the 13 British colonies that formed the original states of the United States)

Sense 4

Meaning:

The Algonquian language of the Massachuset

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

Massachuset; Massachusetts

Hypernyms ("Massachusetts" is a kind of...):

Algonquian; Algonquian language; Algonquin (family of North American Indian languages spoken from Labrador to South Carolina and west to the Great Plains)

 Context examples 

To systematically test the effects of mutations across the cancer genome, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and their colleagues used a technique called a CRISPR-Cas screen to disrupt specific sequences.

(Novel Approach Gives Insights Into Tumor Development, NIH)

Dr Wilmore Webley, of the University of Massachusetts, conducted the study into the breast cancer patients.

(Scientists Find Virus Linked to Weight Gain, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

In their new study, the research team from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School used the CTC-iChip to establish cell cultures from breast cancer patients.

(Isolated cancer cells may lead to personalized treatments, NIH)

Both reported their observations to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

(Small Asteroid to Safely Pass Close to Earth Sunday, NASA)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Josh McDermott is leading a research team seeking to answer those questions.

(Understanding how the brain makes sense of sound, National Science Foundation)

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have now created variants of the peptide that are potent against bacteria but nontoxic to human cells.

(Venom of Wasp, Bee Repurposed as Antibiotic Drug, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Jennifer Bowen of Northeastern University and colleagues have studied microbes in the sediments of salt marshes in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Plum Island Ecosystems Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in northeastern Massachusetts.

(Changing salt marsh conditions send resident microbes into dormancy, NSF)

The University of Massachusetts scientists set out to scrutinize the contents of tiny sacks released by cells called extracellular vesicles.

(Memory gene goes viral, National Institutes of Health)

Lindsay says the team from Medical Detection Dogs is working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop what he calls an e-nose.

(The Dog's Nose Knows Malaria, Kevin Enochs/VOA)

A team of scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, used spectroscopy to decode the light and reveal clues to the chemical makeup of an atmosphere.

(Hubble Telescope Makes First Atmospheric Study of Earth-Sized Exoplanets, NASA)