Pearl River

English

Etymology 1

Calque of Chinese 珠江 (literally “pearl river”).

Proper noun

the Pearl River

1. A major river in southern China.
   • 1843 January, “Journal of Occurrences : dispatches from Kiying : arrival of I'lipu ; shipwrecked Japanese”, in The Chinese Repository‎^[1], volume XII, number 1, Canton, page 56:

     Pirates have of late become so bold and murderous in their attacks upon the small sailing craft found in the delta of the Pearl river, and the islands interjacent, as to arouse the Chinese government to take strong measures to suppress and disperse them.

   • 1969, Ezra Vogel, Canton under Communism: Programs and Politics in a Provincial Capital 1949-1968‎^[2], Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 132:

     The task of directing thousands of pushcarts and tiny handicraft shops and millions of tiny farms and of controlling the flow of crucial supplies created headaches for officials everywhere and the Pearl River Delta area was justly famous for the flowering of tiny enterprises.

   • 1976 April 25, L. Chen, “Mao's word is unanimous vote?”, in Free China Weekly‎^[3], volume XVII, number 16, Taipei, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 3:

     A Chinese-language broadcast from Moscow said the Tienanmen crowds were indeed against Mao but the burning of vehicles and building was started by the Maoists to provide themselves with excuses for stepped-up suppression.
     We don’t know whether this was the case, but we have learned that some 50,000 Peiping students have been sent to rural and frontier areas since the incident, that corpses have been floating down the Pearl River from Canton, and that the Maoists have been crying out savagely.

   • 2021 November 19, “China Evergrande resumes construction on 63 projects in Pearl River delta”, in Reuters‎^[4], archived from the original on 19 November 2021:

     Debt-laden real estate developer China Evergrande (3333.HK) has resumed construction of 63 projects in the southern Pearl River delta, a regional subsidiary said on Friday.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Pearl River.

Synonyms

• Pearl, Canton, Great River

Translations

river in China

• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 珠江 (zyu¹ gong¹)

  Mandarin: 珠江 (zh) (Zhū Jiāng)

• Hungarian: Gyöngy-folyó (hu)
• Korean: 주강 (jugang)
• Mongolian: please add this translation if you can
• Portuguese: Rio das Pérolas m
• Russian: Жемчужная река (Žemčužnaja reka)
• Tibetan: please add this translation if you can
• Uyghur: please add this translation if you can
• Vietnamese: Châu Giang
• Zhuang: Cuhgyangh

Further reading

• “Pearl River”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• Pearl River at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.
• “Pearl River, pn.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “Pearl”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “Pearl River”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “Pearl River” in TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2024.
• Saul B. Cohen, editor (1998), “Pearl River”, in The Columbia Gazetteer of the World‎^[5], volume 3, New York: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 2388, column 2

Etymology 2

Proper noun

Pearl River

1. (with the) A river in Mississippi and Louisiana, USA.
2. A town in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, United States.
3. A census-designated place in Neshoba County, Mississippi, United States.
4. A hamlet and census-designated place in Rockland County, New York, United States.

Derived terms

• Pearl River County

Further reading

• Pearl River (Mississippi–Louisiana) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Pearl River, Louisiana on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Pearl River, Mississippi on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Pearl River, New York on Wikipedia.Wikipedia