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The adjectivals employed in the composition of Algonkin names are very numerous, and hardly admit of classification.  Noun, adjective, adverb or even an active verb may, with slight change of form, serve as a prefix.  But, as was before remarked, every prefix, strictly considered, is an adverb or must be construed as an adverb,—­the synthesis which serves as a name having generally the verb form.  Some of the most common of these prefixes have been mentioned on preceding pages.  A few others, whose meanings are less obvious and have been sometimes mistaken by translators, may deserve more particular notice.

1.  POHQUI, POHQUAE’; Narr. pauqui; Abn. p[oo]’k[oo]ie; ‘open,’ ‘clear’ (primarily, ’broken’).  In composition with ohke, ‘land,’ or formed as a verbal in _-aug_, it denotes ‘cleared land’ or ’an open place:’  as in the names variously written ‘Pahquioque,’ ‘Paquiaug;’ ‘Pyquaag;’ ‘Poquaig,’ ‘Payquaoge,’ &c., in Danbury and Wethersfield, and in Athol, Mass.

2.  PAHKE (Abn. pa[n]g[oo]i,) ‘clear,’ ‘pure’.  Found with paug, ‘standing water’ or ‘pond,’ in such names as ‘Pahcupog,’ ‘Paquabaug,’ &c.  See page 16.

3.  PAGUAN-AUe, ‘he destroys,’ ‘he slaughters’ (Narr. pauquana, ’there is a slaughter’) in composition with ohke denotes ’place of slaughter’ or ‘of destruction,’ and commemorates some sanguinary victory or disastrous defeat.  This is probably the meaning of nearly all the names written ‘Poquannoc,’ ‘Pequannoc,’ ‘Pauganuck,’ &c., of places in Bridgeport (Stratfield), Windsor and Groton, Conn., and of a town in New Jersey.  Some of these, however, may possibly be derived from paukunni and ohke, ‘dark place.’

4.  PEMI (Abn. pemai-[oo]i; Del. pime-u; Cree, peeme;) denotes deviation from a straight line; ‘sloping,’ ‘aslant,’ ‘twisted.’  PUMMEECHE (Cree, pimich; Chip. pemiji; Abn. pemetsi;) ‘crosswise; traverse.’  Eliot wrote ‘pummeeche may’ for ‘cross-way,’ Obad. 14; and pumetshin (literally, ‘it crosses’) for ‘a cross,’ as in up-pumetshin-eum, ‘his cross,’ Luke xiv. 27. Pemiji-gome or Pemiji-guma, ‘cross water,’ is the Chippewa name for a lake whose longest diameter crosses the general course of the river which flows through it,—­which stretches across, not with the stream.  There is such a lake in Minnesota, near the sources of the Mississippi, just below the junction of the two primary forks of that river; another (’Pemijigome’) in the chain of small lakes which are the northern sources of the Manidowish (and Chippewa) River in Wisconsin, and still another near the Lacs des Flambeaux, the source of Flambeau River, an affluent of the Manidowish.