What is the bayou?

Question:

Answer: bayou Origin: 1767 After visiting the city of Levees (1766), Captain Harry Gordon wrote, "We left New Orleans...and lay that night at the Bayoue." Bayou was the second of two Louisiana French words in his journal that were to become part of the American English vocabulary, just as Louisiana itself would become part of the United States in 1803. Unlike levee, however, bayou is not originally a French word. We owe it to the Choctaw Indians, who showed the French around when they began to arrive in what they called Louisiana early in the eighteenth century. The French were familiar with the Mississippi River, of course, but not with the sluggish little streams flowing into it in the flatlands near the Gulf of Mexico. This, said the Choctaw, is a bayuk. Bien entendu, said the French, bayou. In American English, it took some experiments in spelling before we settled on bayou. We also wrote bayoo, byo, and bayyou in attempts to reflect the pronunciation. To this day in Louisiana, bayou retains its original meaning of "a small slow stream." In other parts of the United States, the word has been adapted to the terrain. In the West, a bayou can be simply a ravine or dry streambed. In the North and West, a bayou can be a small lake or lagoon, especially one next to a river or lake.

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