Peoria [pee-awr-ee-uh, -ohr-] Examples noun
- a city in central Illinois, on the Illinois River.
- a town in central Arizona.
Related formsPe·o·ri·an, adjective, noun Examples from the Web for peoria Contemporary Examples of peoria
Mainstream gays want Pride parades to play well in Peoria, with large corporate floats and photogenic participants.
Is Caring About Climate Change an Essential Part of LGBT Identity?
Jay Michaelson
September 21, 2014
Peoria indulges in, and mostly enjoys, just about every vice known to man or woman from New York to Baghdad to Bangkok.
Newsweek Takedown From Beyond the Grave: Michael Hastings’s Fiction Tells the Truth
Christopher Dickey
June 18, 2014
Ernst even sought to find out how Ulysses might play in Peoria (not well, if the returned survey is any indication).
How ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ Is Like ‘Ulysses’
Danielle Sigler
June 16, 2012
And how the world then reacts has equally major ripples from Peoria to Portland.
Zachary Karabell
August 2, 2011
The 16-year-old Shali was dropped into the alien world of high school in Peoria, Ill., unable to speak a word of English.
John Barry
July 24, 2011
Historical Examples of peoria
But this man, named Clement, a banker from Peoria, had proved unworthy.
Stewart Edward White
I was born and brought up on the plains, and I’ve been to Peoria only to get educated, as they say.
Ralph Bonehill
This sheet of water, now called Peoria Lake, was twenty miles long and three broad.
John S. C. Abbott
It’s the City of Peoria, the same boat you boys tried to run away on.
Edgar Lee Masters
Come to Peoria, and I will see if I can’t help you save money.
Horatio Alger
British Dictionary definitions for peoria Peoria noun
- a port in N central Illinois, on the Illinois River. Pop: 112 907 (2003 est)
Word Origin and History for peoria Peoria
small city in Illinois, U.S., originally the name of a subdivision of the Miami/Illinois people (1673), from native /peewaareewa/. Their own name is said to mean “carriers.” The place name also is found in Oklahoma and Iowa, but it is the Illinois city that has been proverbially regarded as the typical measure of U.S. cultural and intellectual standards at least since Ambrose Bierce (c.1890). Also the butt of baseball player jokes (c.1920-40, when it was part of the St. Louis Cardinals farm system) and popularized in the catchphrase “It’ll play in Peoria” (often negative), meaning “the average American will approve,” which was popular in the Nixon White House (1969-74) but seems to have had a vaudeville origin. Personification in “little old lady in Peoria” is said to be from Harold Ross of the “New Yorker.” Peoria’s rivals as embodiment of U.S. small city values and standards include Dubuque, Iowa; Hoboken and Hackensack, N.J.; Oakland (Gertrude Stein: “When you get there, there isn’t any there there”) and Burbank, Calif., and the entire state of North Dakota.