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wam⋅pum

  [wom-puhm, wawm-]
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–noun
1. Also called peag, seawan, sewan. cylindrical beads made from shells, pierced and strung, used by North American Indians as a medium of exchange, for ornaments, and for ceremonial and sometimes spiritual purposes, esp. such beads when white but also including the more valuable black or dark-purple varieties.
2. Informal. money.
Origin:
1630–40; short for wampumpeag
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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wam·pum   (wŏm'pəm, wôm'-)   
n.  
  1. Small cylindrical beads made from polished shells and fashioned into strings or belts, formerly used by certain Native American peoples as currency and jewelry or for ceremonial exchanges between groups. Also called peag.
  2. Informal Money.

[Short for wampumpeag.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Wampum

Wam"pum\, n. [North American Indian wampum, wompam, from the Mass. w['o]mpi, Del. w[=a]pe, white.] Beads made of shells, used by the North American Indians as money, and also wrought into belts, etc., as an ornament.

Round his waist his belt of wampum. --Longfellow.

Girded with his wampum braid. --Whittier.

Note: These beads were of two kinds, one white, and the other black or dark purple. The term wampum is properly applied only to the white; the dark purple ones are called suckanhock. See Seawan. "It [wampum] consisted of cylindrical pieces of the shells of testaceous fishes, a quarter of an inch long, and in diameter less than a pipestem, drilled . . . so as to be strung upon a thread. The beads of a white color, rated at half the value of the black or violet, passed each as the equivalent of a farthing in transactions between the natives and the planters." --Palfrey.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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wampum [(wahm-puhm)]

Beads made from polished shells that some Native Americans once used as money and jewelry.

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

wampum 
1636, shortened from wampumpeag (1627), from Algonquian (probably Narragansett) wanpanpiak "string of white shell beads," from wab "white" + ompe "string" + pl. suffix -ag.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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