Chipewyan

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A Dene Indigenous people living around the lakes of northern Canada ; the Athabaskan language spoken by that people
2. An Athabaskan First Nations group inhabiting the northern Canadian subarctic ; the Athabaskan tongue used by members of that group
3. Indigenous Dene nation of the Canadian north ; the Northern Athabaskan language of that nation

Etymology: The Chipewyan are a Dene people of northern Canada, and their name comes not from their own language but from a neighbouring one. In Plains Cree, "Cīpwayān" meant "pointed skin", built from "cīpwāw", "to be pointed", and "wayān", "skin" or "hide". The name referred to the cut of the parkas these people made, which had a distinctive pointed hem at the front and back. Cree speakers thus named a people after a garment, and that outside label stuck. The word, then, is a description of clothing rather than a self-chosen ethnonym. Its meaning stayed tied to the Chipewyan as a people and language group, and the English form keeps the Cree-derived shape of the original name, not the Dene one the people used for themselves.