Cayuga
Americannoun
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Cayugas,
plural
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Cayuga
plural
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a member of a tribe of North American Indians, the smallest tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy.
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the dialect of the Seneca language spoken by the Cayuga.
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Also called Cayuga duck. one of an American breed of domestic ducks having black plumage.
noun
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a member of a Native American people (one of the Iroquois peoples) formerly living around Cayuga Lake
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the language of this people, belonging to the Iroquoian family
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of Cayuga
1735–45, < Cayuga *kayo·kwę, name of a 17th-century village; compare Cayuga kayokwęhó˙nǫʔ Cayuga (people) (or < a related form in another N Iroquoian language)
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:
Megan Romer likes to spend her free time sewing costumes for school plays, picking blackberries in her backyard in rural Cayuga County, N.Y., and watching her partner play the fiddle in folk bands.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026
“It didn’t make sense because you use them once and throw them out,” said Hans Pfister, the president and co-founder of Cayuga Collection, the hotel group that manages the resort, which took housekeeping’s advice.
From New York Times ● Apr. 30, 2024
New York’s Cayuga Lake Wine Trail is promoting “Sips to the Eclipse” for the weekend ahead of April 8.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 15, 2024
Cayuga – the only Federation vessel orbiting an unaffiliated colony when the Gorn attack it.
From Salon ● Aug. 11, 2023
It was made up of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk Nations and was later joined by the Tuscaroras.
From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Ranged across what is now upstate New York, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas had recently forged a “covenant chain” of alliance with several English colonies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 17, 2026
The Senecas and a few of the Cayugas were the only members of the confederacy who took part in the war.
From The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada by Francis Parkman
I could first go with belts to the Cayugas, and tell the truth about Quider and his party.
From Cardigan by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
Thus, when what is now New York State was first settled, it was largely occupied by five tribes—the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas—called “the Five Nations.”
From American Indians by Frederick Starr
It is my duty to protect my Cayugas, and it is yours to obey me.
From Cardigan by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
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.
