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)
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
To the Chumash, “a school of sardines would have looked like an enormous, dark shadow passing beneath the water.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
The book initially focuses on the Chumash people, on Southern California’s Channel Islands, who once fished from small boats made of bundled reeds.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
Additional reinforcements are set to arrive Wednesday, including a crew from the Chumash Fire Department and specially designed wildland fire engines, which will help increase access to rugged sections of the island.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 20, 2026
“Susanne is one of the very few contemporary Chumash people who have truly devoted themselves to becoming skilled weavers,” said Timbrook, author of “Chumash Ethnobotany: Plant Knowledge Among the Chumash People of Southern California.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 8, 2026
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 John Wesley Powell
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.
