Delaware

American  

[del-uh-wair] / ˈdɛl əˌwɛər /

noun

• Delawares,
  plural
• Delaware
  plural

1. Baron. De La Warr, 12th Baron.

2. a state in the eastern United States, on the Atlantic coast. 2,057 square miles (5,330 square kilometers). Dover. DE (for use with zip code), Del.

3. a city in central Ohio.

4. a river flowing south from southeastern New York, along the boundary between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, into the Delaware Bay. 296 miles (475 kilometers) long.

5. a member of a grouping of North American Indian peoples, comprising the Munsee, Unami, and Unalachtigo, formerly occupying the drainage basin of the Delaware River, the lower Hudson River valley, and the intervening area.

6. the Eastern Algonquian language of any of the Delaware peoples.

7. Horticulture.

   1. a red vinifera grape grown for table use that yields a white wine.

   2. the vine bearing this fruit.

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Delaware ¹ British  

/ ˈdɛləˌwɛə /

noun

1. a member of a North American Indian people formerly living near the Delaware River

2. the language of this people, belonging to the Algonquian family

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Delaware ² British  

/ ˈdɛləˌwɛə /

noun

1. an American variety of grape that has sweet light red fruit

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Delaware ³ British  

/ ˈdɛləˌwɛə /

noun

1. Abbreviation: Del..   DE.  a state of the northeastern US, on the Delmarva Peninsula: mostly flat and low-lying, with hills in the extreme north and cypress swamps in the extreme south. Capital: Dover. Pop: 817 491 (2003 est). Area: 5004 sq km (1932 sq miles)

2. a river in the northeastern US, rising in the Catskill Mountains and flowing south into Delaware Bay , an inlet of the Atlantic. Length 660 km (410 miles)

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Delaware Cultural  

1. State in the eastern United States bordered by Pennsylvania to the north, Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and Maryland to the west and south. Its capital is Dover, and its largest city is Wilmington.

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Discover More

One of the thirteen colonies.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• Delaware
  plural
• Delawares
  plural

Etymology

Origin of Delaware

First recorded in 1720–30 in reference to the American Indian peoples

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Delaware Delawares

Pacific Coast is registered in the Santa Barbara County, Calif., town of Orcutt through a corporate structure that includes a parent entity in Delaware by the same name.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026

Delaware Life started a remediation plan months ago to restructure some of the loans, including through the TWG purchases, according to S&P Global.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026

The current probe burst into public view after June filings by Delaware Life and Clear Spring revealed the companies had been subpoenaed by federal authorities.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026

Jim Allen, the elections director of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, which had already banned election workers from directly betting on elections, earlier this year added a ban on using prediction markets to do so.

From Salon ● Aug. 13, 2026

He hustled us out the door and down the street, where we took a chain of buses for an hour and a half to Cape Henlopen in southern Delaware.

From "The Book of Unknown Americans" by Cristina Henríquez

But leaders of the Shawnee Tribe and the Eastern Shawnees, both now based in Oklahoma, like the Delawares, said they hadn’t had any discussions about it.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 11, 2024

The framers from the big states, like Virginia’s James Madison, fought the idea furiously, but in the end, the Vermonts and Delawares had their way.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 18, 2020

The French, aided by the Potawotomis, Ottawas, Shawnees, and Delawares, ambushed the fifteen hundred British soldiers and Virginia militia who marched to the fort.

From Textbooks ● Dec. 30, 2014

Imagine carving out of an expanse as large as 1.5 Delawares — a mound as tall, from base to peak, as Mount McKinley in Alaska, the tallest mountain in North America at 20,237 feet.

From New York Times ● Dec. 8, 2014

Wayne’s units entered what is now northwestern Ohio and established a base they called Fort Defiance in the heart of an Indigenous alliance that included Delawares, Shawnees, Miamis, and Wyandots.

From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz