Erie
Americannoun
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Eries,
plural
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Erie
plural
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Lake, a lake between the NE central United States and SE central Canada: the southernmost lake of the Great Lakes; site of the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813 in which Commodore Perry defeated the British. 239 miles (385 km) long; 9,940 sq. mi. (25,745 sq. km).
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a port in NW Pennsylvania, on Lake Erie.
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a member of a tribe of American Indians formerly living along the southern shore of Lake Erie.
noun
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a member of a North American Indian people formerly living south of Lake Erie
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the language of this people, possibly belonging to the Iroquoian family
noun
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a lake between the US and Canada: the southernmost and the shallowest of the Great Lakes; empties by the Niagara River into Lake Ontario. Area: 25 718 sq km (9930 sq miles)
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a port in NW Pennsylvania, on Lake Erie. Pop: 101 373 (2003 est)
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of Erie
From Erie (an Iroquoian language) Erie, Eriez, shortening of Erielhonan “long tail” (the Erie were called the Cat People, referring to the cougar)
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
He was also the central character in Gregory Sass's 1985 children's novel Redcoat, and the Fort Erie Visitor Centre in Ontario has a display dedicated to him.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 7, 2026
The tiny village is nestled along the southern shore of Lake Erie and offers a mix of multimillion-dollar estates and more modest residences.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 7, 2026
“Lake Erie is a shallow lake, which makes it famously unpredictable—storms can whip up 20-foot waves, and shoreline erosion is a very real factor,” Ayers says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
The names of four of the Great Lakes - Ontario, Huron, Michigan and Erie - originate from indigenous words.
From BBC ● Aug. 27, 2026
Behind her, the headstones fell away and it was all blue sky above the vast grayness of Erie.
From "Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet" by Joanne Proulx
“This aquifer, they estimate, contains eight Lake Eries of water, and they have already nearly depleted one. It’s like draining the Great Lakes, but we don’t see it.”
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 11, 2016
Near Bah-flo this morning a party of Eries shot one without success.
From Armageddon—2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlan
They turned their faces upon the Eries, and where are the Eries now?
From The Refugees by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
In this way the Eries were in turn surprised and defeated in their last game with their rivals.
From Ocean to Ocean on Horseback Being the Story of a Tour in the Saddle from the Atlantic to the Pacific; with Especial Reference to the Early History and Devel by Willard W. Glazier
The Eries perished in a war provoked, as the French missionaries in their always trustworthy accounts inform us, by a perverse freak of cruelty on their own part.
From The Iroquois Book of Rites by Horatio Hale
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
