Kickapoo

noun

Kick·​a·​poo ˈki-kə-ˌpü 

1

plural Kickapoo or Kickapoos : a member of an Indigenous people living in southern Wisconsin and Illinois in the eighteenth century

2

: a dialect of Fox (see fox sense 2)

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from Kickapoo kiikaapoa, a self-designation, of uncertain origin

Note: The notion that the name derives from Kickapoo ki·wika·pa·wa, translated as "he stands about" or "he moves about, standing now here, now there" perhaps appears first in the article on the Kickapoo by James Mooney and William Jones in the Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, part 1 (1907), p. 684; it has been widely repeated since then. According to the editors of the Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast (Smithsonian Institution, 1978), p. 656, "this is a folk etymology and linguistically impossible."

First Known Use

1722, in the meaning defined at sense 1