pennsylvania

1. 1.

   a Mid-Atlantic state; one of the original 13 colonies

   SynonymsKeystone StatePAPa.

   BroaderAmerican state

   Part ofUnited StatesMid-Atlantic states

   PartsUniversity of PennsylvaniaAllentownAltoonaBethlehemErieGettysburg
2. 2.

   one of the British colonies that formed the United States

   BroaderColony
3. 3.

   a university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

   SynonymsUniversity of PennsylvaniaPenn

   Broaderuniversity

   Part ofIvy League

Other forms of pennsylvania

plural

pennsylvanias·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about pennsylvania

What does pennsylvania mean?

pennsylvania means "a Mid-Atlantic state; one of the original 13 colonies". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in pennsylvania?

pennsylvania has 4 syllables: penn-syl-va-nia. The stress falls on "va". In IPA it is /ˌpɛnsəlˈveɪnjə/.

What is another word for pennsylvania?

Close synonyms include Keystone State, PA, Pa., University of Pennsylvania, Penn. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is pennsylvania a common word?

pennsylvania is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.