Cape Girardeau

4 7.0

A city in southeast Missouri in the United States on the Mississippi River

proper noun
/keɪp dʒɪˈrɑrdəˌoʊ/

: Cape Girardeau

She moved to Cape Girardeau for her new job at the university.

Examples

The historic downtown of Cape Girardeau attracts many tourists each year.
After the flood, volunteers from Cape Girardeau helped with relief efforts in nearby towns.
I visited Cape Girardeau last summer.
Cape Girardeau is known for its beautiful parks.
The historic downtown of Cape Girardeau attracts many tourists each year.
After the flood, volunteers from Cape Girardeau helped with relief efforts in nearby towns.
She moved to Cape Girardeau for her new job at the university.

Surface Forms

Cape Girardeau main

Morphology

cape + Girardeau

The component 'cape' clearly signals a geographic place, so a B1 learner who knows 'cape' and recognises 'Girardeau' as a proper name would likely infer this is a place-name. However, 'Girardeau' carries no semantic information about type or location, and ‘Cape X’ can refer to headlands, towns, or other toponyms, so the exact meaning 'a city in southeast Missouri' is not derivable from the parts alone.

Etymology

Cape Girardeau may come from a story about an early French man named Girardeau who set up a trading post on a high bend of the Mississippi River. The French word Cape comes from 'cap', meaning 'headland' or 'point', so the name originally meant 'Girardeau's headland', which is why the riverside city still has that name today.