a communal structure for multiple dwelling and defensive purposes of certain agricultural Indians of the southwestern United States: built of adobe or stone, typically many-storied and terraced, the structures were often placed against cliff walls, with entry through the roof by ladder.
(initial capital letter) a member of a group of Indian peoples living in pueblo villages in New Mexico and Arizona since prehistoric times.
an Indian village.
(in Spanish America) a town or village.
(in the Philippines) a town or a township.
a communal village, built by certain Indians of the southwestern US and parts of Latin America, consisting of one or more flat-roofed stone or adobe houses
(in Spanish America) a village or town
(in the Philippines) a town or township
An Americanism dating back to 1800–10; from Colonial Spanish; Spanish: “town,” from Latin populus “community, people, nation”; cf. people ( def. )
If your home is in a pueblo, you probably live in the southwestern part of the United States, in a community of adobe houses. This noun of Spanish origin refers to a structure and institution of Native American origin: a communal village consisting of contiguous, multistory flat-roofed houses. Spanish explorers of the American Southwest were the first to use the word pueblo. The ultimate root, populus, is Latin and is related to population and people. Today, the state of New Mexico is home to the greatest number of pueblos still in use.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
To this day, cities like L.A. retain water rights from those pueblo days.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 2, 2026
Instead they encountered Hawikku, an adobe pueblo in what is now western New Mexico.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 28, 2026
Hackman and Arakawa “were not interested in re-creating native pueblo architecture,” he added.
From MarketWatch ● Jan. 19, 2026
I met my hosts at the restaurant’s entrance, made to look like a pueblo plaza complete with a huge water fountain, towering church steeple and a pink exterior better suited for a spoonful of Pepto-Bismol.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2025
She liked even less what awaited her at the entrance to the pueblo, where their guide had left them while he went inside for instructions.
From "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
“In the beginning there was nothing but Spider Woman,” say Navajo and Pueblo elders.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026
It follows ancient trade routes Indigenous nations had been using for thousands of years, from the Osage Trace in Missouri to the paths of the Pueblo peoples in New Mexico and the Mojave in California.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2026
The new business would be anchored by the majority-owned Nevada Gold Mines and the Pueblo Viejo mine in the Dominican Republic, as well as its wholly-owned Fourmile discovery in Nevada.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 19, 2026
One of the boats had departed Pucallpa to the north on Sunday and was travelling towards the riverside communities of Caco Macaya, Curiaca del Caco, and Pueblo Nuevo del Caco, local media reports.
From BBC ● Dec. 1, 2025
The design on this modern seed pot by Pearl Talachy of Nambé Pueblo depicts a corn plant.
From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Losing faith in the reality of Quivira, Coronado sent most of his men back to the Tiwa pueblos.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 28, 2026
After Coronado recuperated, he marched east until the Spaniards encountered 12 Tiwa pueblos near present-day Albuquerque, N.M.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 28, 2026
Many pilgrims take turns running hundreds of miles back to their pueblos, carrying a torch lit at the foot of Tepayac.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 12, 2025
This is a solo inspired by rituals that Graham observed in the pueblos of the American Southwest, specifically, the kachina figures that served as comic relief at religious ceremonies.
From New York Times ● Apr. 16, 2024
A bird’s-eye view of ten or a dozen of the principal pueblos, then a landing for lunch in the valley of Malpais.
From "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
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.
