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Spokane

Pronunciation: /spoʊˈkæn/

The English word “Spokane” has 3 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A Native American Plateau tribe who inhabited the eastern portion of Washington state and parts of northern Idaho.

proper noun

  1. The language of the Spokane tribe, a member of the Salish (or Salishan) language family.
  2. A tributary of the Columbia River in Washington and Idaho.

Etymology

A number of etymologies of the name have been proposed, most frequently “Sun children”, “children of the Sun”, or “muddy people”. According to Barry Pritzker (2011), these interpretations are most probably popular etymologies derived from an actual self-designation of Spokane Spoqe'ind (“round head”).

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.