Chinook

[ shi-nook, -nook, chi- ]

noun

, plural Chi·nooks, (especially collectively) Chi·nook.

1. a member of a formerly numerous North American Indian people originally inhabiting the northern shore of the mouth of the Columbia River and the adjacent territory.
2. either of the two languages of the Chinook Indians. Compare Lower Chinook, Upper Chinook.
3. (lowercase) a warm, dry wind that blows at intervals down the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains.
4. (lowercase) chinook salmon.
5. a U.S. Army cargo helicopter in service since 1962 and capable of ferrying 12 tons of supplies and troops.

Chinook

¹

/ -ˈnʊk; tʃɪˈnuːk /

noun

1. -nook-nooks a Native American people of the Pacific coast near the Columbia River
2. the language of this people, probably forming a separate branch of the Penutian phylum

chinook

²

/ tʃɪˈnuːk; -ˈnʊk /

noun

1. Also calledsnow eater a warm dry southwesterly wind blowing down the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains
2. Also calledwet chinook a warm moist wind blowing onto the Washington and Oregon coasts from the sea

chinook

/ shĭ-nk′,chĭ- /

1. A moist, warm wind blowing from the sea in coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest.
2. A warm, dry wind descending from the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, causing a rapid rise in temperature. These winds often melt snow quite rapidly, at times at a rate of up to a foot per hour.
3. See also foehn

Word History and Origins

Origin of Chinook¹

C19: from Salish c`inuk

Example Sentences

There is no better place than the high mountain streams of Idaho for Chinook to spawn.

From Time

This year, Denny speared one of the tribe’s three allotted wild Chinook for the season in a stream running through the Sawtooth range.

From Time

The Chinook is obviously built to withstand all sorts of weather, but the point of this exercise is to be responsible stewards of our novelty coin, and so we must consider all possibilities.

From Washington Post

So we can have the military’s fastest chopper, the Boeing CH-47 Chinook, fueled up and whirring before the courier even starts out the door.

From Washington Post

We can have that Chinook sitting there on that green, with plenty of armed guards to keep our $1 trillion in cash safe.

From Washington Post

The Chinook vibrated with deeper and deeper groans until its twin engines managed to heave up our dead weight.

From The Daily Beast

The note promised to send more pictures “like before,” and included a photograph of a Chinook helicopter unloading supplies.

From The Daily Beast

Chinook For this crowd, a spelling bee is no matter to be joked about.

From The Daily Beast

Next he says a double rotor Chinook landed inside the compound.

From The Daily Beast

Need I add that tum-tum in the Chinook jargon signifies the soul!

From Project Gutenberg

Having made friends, he told me in a mixture of broken English and Chinook some of the old folk lore of his tribe.

From Project Gutenberg

But few of them speak the English language fluently; they mostly talk French and Chinook jargon.

From Project Gutenberg

The idea expressed in English by the sentence I came to give it to her is rendered in Chinook by i-n-i-a-l-u-d-am.

From Project Gutenberg

Thus began and ended our first lesson in the Chinook jargon, and our first experience with a clam bake.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

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• hurricane
• monsoon
• squall
• tornado
• wind
• windstorm