Loess Hills
Is this a proper or common noun?
It’s a common noun, but it seems that a specific location is well-known that it has “captured” it as a proper noun.
The term “loess” refers to a specific geological phenomenon. “Loess” is German for “loose or crumbly.”
From Wikipedia:
Loess is a periglacial or aeolian (windborne) sediment, defined as an accumulation of 20% or less of clay and a balance of roughly equal parts sand and silt […], often loosely cemented by calcium carbonate. Usually it is homogeneous and highly porous; it is traversed by vertical capillaries which permit the sediment to fracture and form vertical bluffs.
So, “loess hills” would be a generic term to refer to anything formed by loess which exhibits those characteristics.
But what are the “Loess Hills”? The Wikipedia’s entry for “Loess Hills” discusses the hills to the east of the Missouri River, which is what I have always known the label to apply.
When I drive south down I-29, the Loess Hills are to the left. Coming back north, you can detour into them at a scenic byway route at Missouri River, emerging back onto I-29 just south of Sioux City.
There’s a section at the bottom of the Wikipedia page entitled “Other Loess Landscapes” which says this:
Loess soil also forms the Arikaree Breaks in northwest Kansas, and the Mississippi-Yazoo “Bluff Hills” near Vicksburg, Mississippi. A large region of Nebraska to the south and east of the Sandhills is covered with loess. Deep loess deposits are also found in the Rhine River valley in Germany. Crowley’s Ridge in southeastern Missouri and northeastern and eastern Arkansas is made up of loess soil.
Why I Looked It Up
In The Three-Body Problem, I found several references to a generic term “loess hills”
The loess hills here had very little vegetation cover.
I was surprised by this, because I always thought “Loess Hills” was a proper name for the hills in Iowa – like “Loess” was a local Native American term or something.
Also interesting: The Three Body Problem was originally written in Chinese and translated, so there are equivalent terms in other languages.