Pawnee
Americannoun
plural
Pawnees,plural
Pawnee-
a member of a confederacy of North American Plains Indians of Caddoan stock formerly located along the Platte River valley, Nebraska, and now living in northern Oklahoma.
-
the Caddoan language of the Pawnee Indians.
noun
-
a member of a confederacy of related North American Indian peoples, formerly living in Nebraska and Kansas, now chiefly in Oklahoma
-
the language of these peoples, belonging to the Caddoan family
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.
Chief Hotate often met Leslie Knope, deputy director of the Parks and Recreation department for the fictional city of Pawnee, to discuss use of the land.
From BBC • Jun. 3, 2025
Unsurprisingly—if you know anything about the people of Pawnee or Knope’s nemesis, dentist Jeremy Jamm—this doesn’t go over well.
From Slate • Sep. 29, 2024
The strongest earthquake on record in Oklahoma was a magnitude 5.8 near Pawnee in September 2016.
From Seattle Times • Jan. 13, 2024
“A story by itself makes it easy for somebody to say this was just one person’s experience,” said Ms. Echo-Hawk, who lives outside Seattle and is a citizen of the Pawnee Nation.
From New York Times • Dec. 12, 2023
Pawnee Bill, the legendary Wild West showman and the onetime partner of Buffalo Bill, described Hale as a “high-class gentleman.”
From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann
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.
