Mahican
[ muh-hee-kuhn ]
noun,plural Ma·hi·cans, (especially collectively) Ma·hi·can for 1, 2.
a tribe or confederacy of North American Indians of the Algonquian family, centralized formerly in the upper Hudson valley.
a member of this tribe or confederacy.
the extinct Algonquian language of the Mahican Indians.
Origin of Mahican
1First recorded in 1605–15; self-designation of the Mahican people; literally, “person (people) of the tidal estuary (of the Hudson River)”; cognate with Munsee Delaware ma·hí·kan; compare -a·hi·kan in kihta·hí·kan “ocean,” with kiht- “great”); the spelling variant Mohican was popularized by James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
- Also Mohican .
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
British Dictionary definitions for Mahican
Mahican
/ (məˈhiːkən) /
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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