Tappan Zee Bridge
- proper noun
:
puente Tappan Zee
- We drove across the Tappan Zee Bridge to get to Rockland County.
Examples
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The old Tappan Zee Bridge was replaced by the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge in 2017.
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Many commuters relied on the Tappan Zee Bridge as part of their daily route.
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The Tappan Zee Bridge was a vital link between Westchester and Rockland counties.
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Did you ever drive across the Tappan Zee Bridge?
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The Tappan Zee Bridge was an iconic structure that connected Westchester and Rockland counties over the Hudson River.
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Many commuters used the Tappan Zee Bridge daily to travel between New York City and the suburbs.
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The Tappan Zee Bridge, completed in 1955, was known for its cantilever design across the Hudson River.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The headword includes the clear noun 'bridge', so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will understand that this refers to a bridge; however 'Tappan' is an unfamiliar proper name and 'Zee' is ambiguous (commonly the letter name in AmE and historically Dutch for 'sea'), so the specific referent/location and historical sense are not derivable from the parts alone. Because the lexical type (a bridge) is transparent but the identity and meaning of the name elements are opaque, the overall expression is only partially predictable.
Etymology
Tappan Zee Bridge gets its name from the place name Tappan Zee: Tappan was the name of a local Native American people and Zee is an old Dutch word for 'sea', used because the Hudson River is very wide there, so the name means the bridge at the wide part of the river.
