Cheyenne
Americannoun
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Cheyennes,
plural
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Cheyenne
plural
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a member of a North American Indian people of the western plains, formerly in central Minnesota and North and South Dakota, and now divided between Montana and Oklahoma.
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an Algonquian language, the language of the Cheyenne Indians.
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a city in and the capital of Wyoming, in the S part.
noun
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a member of a Native American people of the western Plains, now living chiefly in Montana and Oklahoma
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the language of this people, belonging to the Algonquian family
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of Cheyenne
via Canadian French from Dakota Shaiyena, from shaia to speak incoherently, from sha red + ya to speak
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Cheyenne, a city of 66,000 nicknamed “The Magic City of the Plains,” was built on rail, ranching, oil and gas.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 9, 2026
Cheyenne Hunt, the executive director of progressive nonprofit Gen Z for Change and one of those involved in the Swalwell allegations becoming public, has offered to help former Swalwell staffers find new jobs.
From Salon ● Apr. 19, 2026
Aspiring actor and “Euphoria” fan Cheyenne Washington, who grew up in a small town in Connecticut, also recognized the characters.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 9, 2026
In 1996, after being chosen to join the Southern Cheyenne Peace Chiefs, Pratt took the ancestral name Vopenonoma’e, “White Thunder.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 29, 2026
She was a Cheyenne woman who was married to a Lakota man.
From "In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse" by Joseph Marshall III
Like the other traditionals among the Cheyennes and Lakotas, he had desired simply to follow the old way of life—hunting buffalo, raiding tribal enemies and camping where he wished.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2025
“I see this newspaper clipping and it’s Southern Cheyennes in St. Augustine, Fla., in 1875. I know enough about my tribe’s history to know that we were never in Florida.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 27, 2024
For some Cheyennes, every treaty that peace chiefs signed and that the U.S. government broke made violence look more sensible than acquiescence.
From New York Times ● Feb. 16, 2022
From the Rocky Mountains, Cheyennes and Arapahos also acquired horses from New Mexico and used them to move southward and join the hunting, raiding, and trading culture of the Plains.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018
Tall Bull was a chief who commanded a large village of renegade Sioux and Cheyennes, who had given great trouble by their depredations.
From Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales With notes on the origin, customs and character of the Pawnee people by George Bird Grinnell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
