Inuit
Americannoun
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Inuits,
plural
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Inuit
plural
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a member of a group of Indigenous peoples inhabiting northernmost North America from northern Alaska to eastern Canada and Greenland.
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the language of the Inuit, a member of the Eskimo-Aleut family comprising a variety of dialects.
noun
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any of several Native peoples of N America or Greenland, as distinguished from those from Asia or the Aleutian Islands (who are still generally referred to as Eskimos); the preferred term for Eskimo in N America Compare Yupik
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the language of these peoples; Inuktitut
Sensitivity
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of Inuit
First recorded in 1755–65; from Inuit: literally, “people,” plural of inuk “person”
Compare meaning
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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.
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Greenlanders and other Inuit peoples have hunted seals for their meat and skin for centuries, but international bans have collapsed sealskin markets.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 7, 2026
No news regarding the coming fall season has made me happier than the return of this sunny, aspirational Indigenous comedy, set in a small town among the Inuit people in Nunavut, Canada’s northernmost territory.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 1, 2026
A Greenlandic commission is to present a highly anticipated report Friday to determine whether Denmark's forced contraception of thousands of the Arctic island's indigenous Inuit constituted a "genocide".
From Barron's ● Aug. 28, 2026
They came from a whale that was killed legally by native Inuit in 1996, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
From BBC ● Jul. 31, 2026
Though Elisha had no way of knowing, another explorer learned from a group of the Arctic’s Inuit people that Sir Franklin had died years back.
From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock
As a proportion of males between the ages of 18 and 60, this equates to an estimated 2% of Chukchi, 1.4% of Russian Inuits, 1.32% of Koryaks and 0.8% of Khanty.
From BBC ● Feb. 19, 2026
He had brought smallpox with him, and the disease raced around the island, killing Inuits and Europeans alike.
From Science Magazine ● Sep. 26, 2023
On April 6, 1909, American explorers Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson and four Inuits became the first men to reach the North Pole.
From Washington Times ● Apr. 6, 2021
The Canadian government is discussing the repatriation of the skulls of five Labrador Inuits from the collection of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris.
From New York Times ● Nov. 25, 2014
They soon found that there was a bright side to life among the Inuits, and that the natives indulged in games of skill much as we do.
From True Tales of Arctic Heroism in the New World by Adolphus W. Greely
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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.
