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The following terms derive from Native American languages, but appear only in dictionaries, not in actual use in ≥3 literary works.
Words
- chebog (C) — "menhaden" — from an Algonquian language, probably Narragansett
- kiskatom, kiskitom, kiskitomas, kisky-Thomas-nut, keskatama — "hickory-nut" — from an Algonquian word meaning "rough" (compare Massachusett kushki)? (see Kiskatom)
- moose-misse (C) (also: missey-moosey, moose-miss) — "any of several plants, including the false wintergreen (Pyrola americana), Sorbus americana or Viburnum lantanoides" (in New England usage) — Abenaki mozmezi (“moose wood”) (compare Ojibwe mooz-... (“moose bush”))
- nanticoke (C) — "(particular?) bean", (Nanticoke) "tribe inhabiting Chesapeake Bay, Delware" — from Nanticoke Nentego (“tidewater people”), the tribe's autonym
- neeshaw (or: neshaw) (C) — "eel" (used by the fisherman of Martha's Vineyard) — Narragansett neeshauog (“eels, lampreys”)
- neeskotting (neeskot) (C) — "spearing fish at night by torchlight using a long pole with a hook on the end" — probably from a Massachusett cognate of Mi'kmaq nigog (“fishing-harpoon?”)
- okow (C) (also: occow) — "Sander vitreus, the yellow walleye" (in older references, the obsolete scientific name Lucioperca americana is used) — probably from Cree okâw / Cree ᐅᑳᐤ (okaaw, “pickerel; walleye; perch”) (though some sources derive it from Polish okoń (“perch”) or Russian о́кунь (ókunʹ, “perch”) instead)[1]
- quasky — "blue-back trout" — variant of "oquassa"
- sagakomi (C) (or: sacacomi, saccacomi; possibly also: sagakomin) — "mixture, including bearberries (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), which is smoked" — Ojibwe *sagakomin (modern orthography: zaga-(g?)-omin; "smoking berry"), from zagaswaa (“he or she smokes”)
- shanatawhee — "root of the edible thistle" — (from a group Lewis and Clark encountered; their account suggests Chinook; alternatively, perhaps Shoshone)
- sunck (or: sunck-squaw, sunk-squaw) — "female chief or important person" (obsolete; contrasted with a male mugwump) — probably from Massachusett?
- tawkee (or: tawkie, tawkim, tawko) — "golden club (fish)", "Virginia wake-robin" — a Lenape term *p'tukwi ("round"); compare Unami tùkwchèsu (“he is round”)
- tuckernuck (C) — "picnic", "particular kind of candy" — the "picnic" sense is either from the name of the island off Nantucket, from a New England Algonquian word meaning "loaf of bread" (per William Bright's Native American Placenames of the United States), or directly from an Algonquian word meaning "picnic"; the "candy" sense is perhaps unrelated to this and related to "tuck shop"
- wabashed (see: Citations:Wabashing) — "cheated" — from the river "Wabash" ("dirty white")
- wammikin (C) — "wooden raft with a shanty containing a kitchen and bedroom on it" — from a Maine Algonquian language; compare wannigan
- wampapin — "water chinquapin (Nelum lutea)" — Ojibwe "crooked root"
- wapacut (also: wapacuthu?) — "snowy owl" — probably Algonquian (probably Cree or Ojibwe)
- wauregan (C) — "good, fine, showy" — Mohegan-Pequot or possibly Mahican, related to Massachusett
- weesick — "hickory shad" (used around the Connecticut River) — an Algonquian language
- wenona (or: Wenona) — "small snake (Charina bottae) found in California and Mexico" — (definition per FWH, who derives it "from winona (q. v.) in the Santee Sioux language, signifying 'first-born child' ")
- whiggiggin — "written permit to hunt" — Abenaki awighigan (“book; that which is carved”)
- wigwassing or wequashing — "taking of eels by torchlight" — Algonquian wigwas, "birch bark"
- wiskinky, wiskinkie — "officer of the/a Tammany Society" — from a (Algonquian?) word wiskinkhie meaning "his eye"
- yawknut (or even more rarely: yockernut (or yockeynut) — "water chinkapin" — (from "yoncopin" + "nut")
References
- Most of these words appear in Frederick Webb Hodge's Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. Some also appear in the Century dictionary.
- ^ 1990, Fred Mather, Modern fish culture in fresh and salt water, page 231: "'Okow,' sometimes heard in the lake region, is evidently a corruption of 'okun' and 'okunj,' Polish and Russian names for the common perch."
See also