Killikinnick

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A blend of dried leaves and bark smoked as a tobacco substitute by some Native American peoples ; a low evergreen shrub with red berries that is often used as a source of this blend
2. A smoking mix made from dried plant matter such as leaves and bark, traditionally used in place of tobacco ; the trailing bearberry shrub whose leaves are often used in such mixtures
3. Dried leaves and inner bark blended for smoking in place of tobacco ; a creeping evergreen plant with small red fruit that grows in cold northern regions

Etymology: "Killikinnick" is simply another spelling of "kinnikinnick," and both come from Unami, the Algonquian language of the Lenape (Delaware) people of the Mid-Atlantic region. In Unami, "këlëkënikàn" meant a smoking mixture, and the word passed into English with that sense intact: a blend of dried leaves, bark, or herbs, often tobacco-free or mixed with it, smoked in pipes long before it became a name for anything else. The spelling with the "l" in the first syllable is the older form, and English speakers wrote it many different ways before the spelling settled. The word's journey was one of a sound borrowed from an Indigenous language and then reshaped by English ears and tongues. Its meaning also traveled: the mixture itself was the point, and the word stayed attached to the pipe and the practice of smoking it.