Missis … now what?

Wilberforce Thornapple is right; Mississippi is hard to spell.

Remembering that the word has four i’s, four s’s and two p’s helps. So does breaking it down to its syllables: Mis/sis/sip/pi. This word is a good reminder that we often split up double letters (bub/ble, for example.)

Mississippi was borrowed from the Ojibwe word, misi-ziibi, which meant “great river,” according to Wikipedia. Maybe a lengthy name is just right for such a long, magnificent river. The Mississippi snakes its way from Minnesota down to the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana for more than 2,300 miles.