Nanticoke
1 Americannoun
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a member of an Indigenous North American people who have traditionally inhabited Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.
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the Algonquian language of the Nanticoke.
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a member of a group of people of southern Delaware with mixed white, Black, and Indigenous ancestry.
noun
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a city in SE Ontario, in S Canada, on Lake Erie.
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a city in E Pennsylvania.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of Nanticoke
First recorded in 1640–50; from Nanticoke (an Eastern Algonquian language), the name of a place once inhabited by the tribe
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:
Dougherty was elected to the city council in Nanticoke again in 2023, running on the Democratic Party line.
From Salon ● May 6, 2026
Short said the charter change is aimed at helping economic recovery efforts in Seaford, a town of about 8,000 situated on the banks of the Nanticoke River.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 30, 2023
The creek, along with the Nanticoke River it feeds, is believed to be Maryland’s only sturgeon breeding ground.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 16, 2022
As they journeyed through the region, their travels brought them face to face with the people who had lived there for millennia – the Lenni Lenape, the father tribe of the Lenape and Nanticoke Indians.
From Washington Times ● Jul. 23, 2022
The Nanticoke drew out his flint, and struck fire, while the chief of the Muskrats, who had never seen fire before, sat looking on and expressing loud amazement.
From Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 by Jones, James Athearn
The land the Nanticokes recently acquired sits near a former one-room schoolhouse for Native American children that opened in the 1920s and closed in the 1960s.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 28, 2021
Known as the “People of the Tide Water,” the Nanticokes had their traditional homelands in the Chesapeake Bay area and Delaware, and traded beaver pelts with the English.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 28, 2021
Street said some Nanticokes took on European last names because “nobody knew how to translate” their native names.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 28, 2021
Leaders of both the Nanticokes and Lenapes said they had tried for years to buy the parcels, but they either couldn’t make the deal come together or they didn’t have enough money.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 28, 2021
Many fragments of tribes of Algonkin lineage—Delawares, Nanticokes, Mohegans, Mississagas—sought the same hospitable protection, which never failed them.
From The Iroquois Book of Rites by Hale, Horatio
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.
