Dakota

American  

[duh-koh-tuh] / dəˈkoʊ tə /

noun

1. a former territory in the United States: divided into the states of North Dakota and South Dakota in 1889.

2. North Dakota or South Dakota.

3. the Dakotas, North Dakota and South Dakota.

4. Also called Sioux.  a member of the largest tribe of the Siouan stock of North American Indians, who originally occupied Minnesota and Wisconsin and later migrated westward to the Great Plains.

5. Santee.

6. a Siouan language spoken by the Dakota and Assiniboin Indians.

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Dakota British  

/ dəˈkəʊtə /

noun

1. a former territory of the US: divided into the states of North Dakota and South Dakota in 1889

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• Dakotan
  adjective

Example Sentences

North Dakota is one of the few states with a multimember system, where two representatives and one senator govern together in the same district.

From Salon • Jun. 8, 2026

Times staff writers Seema Mehta, Dakota Smith and Andrew Khouri contributed to this report.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 6, 2026

A woman in North Dakota was found to have fraudulently received $128,601 in SSI payments — but that figure was collected over 10 years, averaging fraud of $12,860 a year.

From MarketWatch • Jun. 4, 2026

Last month, however, the South Dakota Supreme Court reversed the ruling and sent the case back to the lower court.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 26, 2026

Dakota was running back and forth along a line of stacked shields, banging his goblet on them like they were a xylophone.

From "The Son of Neptune" by Rick Riordan