Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
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adj
Of or pertaining to the Iroquois confederacy, its people, language, or culture.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: Iroquese
Antonyms: none provided
name
Any of the languages of the Iroquois, belonging to the Iroquoian family of languages.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
A member of a confederacy of (originally) five Native American (Indian) tribes: the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: Iroquese
Antonyms: none provided
noun
A kind of hairdo where both sides of the head are shaved, leaving only a stripe of hair in the middle.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
a family of North American Indian languages spoken by the Iroquois
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: Iroquoian, Iroquoian language
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: Amerind, Amerindian language, American-Indian language, American Indian, Indian
Narrower terms: Cherokee, Cayuga, Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, Tuscarora
noun
any member of the warlike North American Indian peoples formerly living in New York State; the Iroquois League were allies of the British during the American Revolution
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: Indian, American Indian, Red Indian
Narrower terms: Cayuga, Cherokee, Erie, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, Tuscarora
History
Attested in American English since the 1660s, from French Iroquois, Hiroquois (attested since the early 1600s). The ultimate origin is uncertain. theories Missionary Charles Arnaud derived it from Montagnais irno-kué (“terrible people”). Linguist Gordon Day notes that though no form irno "person" is attested, one is plausible (given iriniou and ilnu), but application to a non-Montagnais is unlikely, and kué is too short: the root is kwet-. Day finds support for a longer form kwedɛč ("an Iroquois", lit. "terrible, frightening person") in Pacifique's Micmac grammar, in "goetètjg", and sees "fairly good indications that the name [i.e. kwedɛč] was an ancient one for Iroquoian peoples generally", but then "irno kwedɛč" would awkwardly mean "a person, an Iroquois", which could not have been a usual term. Day theorizes the awkward phrase may nonetheless have been uttered by some interpreter and used thereafter by the unaware French, or alternatively the Montagnais may have borrowed an Iroquoian autonym whereafter Montagnais folk-etymologizers adapted it to resemble those words; for example, Mohawk i-ih rongwe (“man”) would have entered Montagnais as /iːrohkwe/. (Some earlier scholars proposed that an Iroquoian term like the Mohawk term was the direct etymon of the French.) Linguist Peter Bakker alternatively proposes that the etymon is a Basque pidgin word (h)ilokoa "killers" (mirroring Algonquian names for the Iroquois), from hil (“to kill”) and a suffix -koa (“those of”) which may be the source of some other tribal names ending in -quois. Hilokoa, as Brad Loewen notes, is ungrammatical in standard Basque (Loewen suggests irikoa (“those of the walled town”) as an alternative etymon).
Across languages
63 source translations are retained for this English entry.
