WASHINGTON

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does Washington mean? 

• WASHINGTON (noun)
  The noun WASHINGTON has 5 senses:

1. the capital of the United States in the District of Columbia and a tourist mecca; George Washington commissioned Charles L'Enfant to lay out the city in 1791

2. a state in northwestern United States on the Pacific

3. the federal government of the United States

4. 1st President of the United States; commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution (1732-1799)

5. United States educator who was born a slave but became educated and founded a college at Tuskegee in Alabama (1856-1915)

  Familiarity information: WASHINGTON used as a noun is common.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WASHINGTON (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The capital of the United States in the District of Columbia and a tourist mecca; George Washington commissioned Charles L'Enfant to lay out the city in 1791

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

American capital; capital of the United States; Washington; Washington D.C.

Instance hypernyms:

national capital (the capital city of a nation)

Meronyms (parts of "Washington"):

Capitol; Capitol Building (the government building in Washington where the United States Senate and the House of Representatives meet)

Georgetown (a section of northwestern Washington, D.C.)

Capitol Hill; the Hill (a hill in Washington, D.C., where the Capitol Building sits and Congress meets)

White House (the government building that serves as the residence and office of the President of the United States)

Washington Monument (a stone obelisk built in Washington in 1884 to honor George Washington; 555 feet tall)

Lincoln Memorial (memorial building in Washington containing a large marble statue of Abraham Lincoln)

Instance hyponyms:

Potomac (term sometimes used to refer to Washington, D.C.)

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

D.C.; DC; District of Columbia (the district occupied entirely by the city of Washington; chosen by George Washington as the site of the capital of the United States and created out of land ceded by Maryland and Virginia)

Derivation:

Washingtonian (of or relating to the capital of the United States)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A state in northwestern United States on the Pacific

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

Evergreen State; WA; Wash.; Washington

Instance hypernyms:

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

Meronyms (parts of "Washington"):

Kennewick (a town in southern Washington on the Columbia River)

Walla Walla (a town in southeastern Washington near the Oregon border)

Yakima (a town in south central Washington)

Mount Saint Helens; Mount St. Helens; Mt. St. Helens (an active volcano in the Cascade Range in southwestern Washington; erupted violently in 1980 after 123 years of inactivity)

Vancouver (a town in southwestern Washington on the Columbia River across from Portland, Oregon)

Adams; Mount Adams (a mountain peak in southwestern Washington in the Cascade Range (12,307 feet high))

Lake Chelan (a narrow very deep lake in central Washington in the Cascade Range)

Columbia; Columbia River (a North American river; rises in southwestern Canada and flows southward across Washington to form the border between Washington and Oregon before emptying into the Pacific; known for its salmon runs in the spring)

Inland Passage; Inside Passage (a naturally protected waterway from Seattle to Skagway in southeastern Alaska)

Puget Sound (an inlet of the North Pacific in northwestern Washington State)

Mount Rainier; Mount Tacoma; Mt. Rainier; Rainier (a mountain peak in central Washington; highest peak in the Cascade Range; (14,410 feet high))

scablands ((geology) flat elevated land with poor soil and little vegetation that is scarred by dry channels of glacial origin (especially in eastern Washington))

Snake; Snake River (a tributary of the Columbia River that rises in Wyoming and flows westward; discovered in 1805 by the Lewis and Clark Expedition)

Tacoma (a city in west central Washington on an arm of Puget Sound to the south of Seattle)

Spokane (a city in eastern Washington near the Idaho border)

Seattle (a major port of entry and the largest city in Washington; located in west central Washington on the protected waters of Puget Sound with the snow-capped peaks of the Cascade Range and Mount Rainier visible to the south and east; an aerospace and computer center; site of the University of Washington)

capital of Washington; Olympia (capital of the state of Washington; located in western Washington on Puget Sound)

Bellingham (a town in northwestern Washington on a bay near the Canadian border)

Aberdeen (a town in western Washington)

Cape Flattery (a cape of northwestern Washington)

Olympic National Park (a national park in Washington having rain forests of giant evergreens)

North Cascades National Park (a national park in Washington that is an alpine wilderness area featuring gold rush and logging campsites)

Mount Rainier National Park (a national park in Washington having mountain terrain featuring glaciers and alpine lakes and streams and swamps)

Pacific Northwest (a region of the northwestern United States usually including Washington and Oregon and sometimes southwestern British Columbia)

Holonyms ("Washington" 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)

Derivation:

Washingtonian (of or relating to or in the state of Washington)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The federal government of the United States

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

Capital; Washington

Instance hypernyms:

federal government (a government with strong central powers)

Derivation:

Washingtonian (of or relating to the people who run the federal government)

Sense 4

Meaning:

1st President of the United States; commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution (1732-1799)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

George Washington; President Washington; Washington

Instance hypernyms:

full general; general (a general officer of the highest rank)

Chief Executive; President; President of the United States; United States President (the person who holds the office of head of state of the United States government)

Derivation:

Washingtonian (of or relating to or in the manner of George Washington)

Sense 5

Meaning:

United States educator who was born a slave but became educated and founded a college at Tuskegee in Alabama (1856-1915)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

Booker T. Washington; Booker Taliaferro Washington; Washington

Instance hypernyms:

educator; pedagog; pedagogue (someone who educates young people)

 Context examples 

I'll go to Washington and see Brooke.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

A team of researchers from Washington University School of Medicine set out to examine the connections among vitamin D, immune function, atherosclerosis, and insulin resistance.

(How Vitamin D May Affect Heart Disease, Diabetes, NIH)

Research led by University of Washington scientists explored why the Weddell Sea hole appears only in some years, and what role it could play in global ocean circulation.

(Data from robotic drifters explain mysterious holes in Antarctic sea ice, National Science Foundation)

The only other known parchment copy is housed in the National Archives in Washington.

(Parchment Copy of Declaration of Independence Found in Small British Town, VOA)

Parent institutions include Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine.

(Alvin J Siteman Cancer Center, NCI Thesaurus)

The district is occupied entirely by the city of Washington.

(District of Columbia, NCI Thesaurus)

The area in the United States comprised of the following states: Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii.

(Pacific Coast States, NCI Thesaurus)

A spectrum from the Gemini-North telescope taken by the University of Washington team showed that J0045+41 must host at least one supermassive black hole and allowed the researchers to estimate the distance.

(Giant Black Hole Pair Photobombs Andromeda Galaxy, NASA)

According to a team from the Washington University in St. Louis.

(Novel Technology Uses Bacteria for Cleaning Water, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

"We discovered valleys that carried water into lake basins," said Sharon Wilson of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

(Some Ancient Mars Lakes Came Long After Others, NASA)