a member of an American Indian people who formerly inhabited the southern California coast from San Luis Obispo to Santa Monica Bay, as well as the Santa Barbara Islands and the interior westward to the San Joaquin Valley: noted for their sophisticated seacraft and rock paintings.
any of the Hokan languages of the Chumash, at least six in number, all now extinct.
literally: a fifth (part of the Torah)
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The Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center is an engaging dip into Chumash stories, traditions and even plants, but don’t stop there.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 8, 2026
Tongva, Chumash and Cahuilla workers in California formed the backbone of rancho agriculture.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 30, 2025
“Unlike Western belief systems, the Chumash held that humans could, with great effort, traverse these realms.”
From MarketWatch • Oct. 31, 2025
The six-bedroom home is described in its listing as an “architectural reverie” that draws “respectful inspiration from the Chumash people,” a Native American tribe that once occupied the land.
From MarketWatch • Oct. 31, 2025
Chumash is the name of the Santa Rosa Islanders, who spoke a dialect of this stock, and is a term widely known among the Indians of this family.
From Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1885-1886, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 1-142 by Powell, John Wesley
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.
