Monadnock Definition & Meaning

Origin of Monadnock

From the name of Mount Monadnock in New England, which derives from an Abenaki word, perhaps menonadenak, menonadenek (“smooth mountain") or menadenak, menadenek (“isolated mountain"), from aden (“mountain").

From Wiktionary
After Mount Monadnock

From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

Extending from Mount Monadnock in Cheshire, the S.W.
The type of this class of forms is Mt Monadnock in south-western New Hampshire, a fine example of an isolated residual mass rising from an upland some 1500 ft.
Monadnock (in New Hampshire, nearN.E.Massachusetts), the Blue Hills near Boston, Greylock, in the north-west, and Wachusett in the centre, are the most commanding remnant-summits (known generically as " Monadnocks ") of the original mountain system.
This knob or ridge may be appropriately regarded as an ancient physiographic fossil, inasmuch as, being a monadnock of very remote origin, it has long been preserved from the destructive attack of the weather by burial under sea-floor deposits, and recently laid bare, like ordinary organic fossils of much smaller size, by the removal of part of its cover by normal erosion.
On his pages, close beside the Parthenon, the Sphinx, St Paul's, Etna and Vesuvius, you will find the White Mountains, Monadnock, Agiocochook, Katandin, the pickerelweed in bloom, the wild geese honking through the sky, the chick-a-dee braving the snow, Wall Street and State Street, cotton-mills, railroads and Quincy granite.