Shawnee

American  

[shaw-nee] / ʃɔˈni /

noun

Shawnees, plural Shawnee plural

1. a member of an Algonquian-speaking tribe formerly in the east-central U.S., now in Oklahoma.

2. the Algonquian language of the Shawnee tribe.

3. a town in E Kansas.

4. a city in central Oklahoma.

---

Shawnee British  

/ ʃɔːˈniː /

noun

1. a member of a North American Indian people formerly living along the Tennessee River

2. the language of this people, belonging to the Algonquian family

---

Other Word Forms

Inflected Forms

noun

• Shawnee
  plural
• Shawnees
  plural

Etymology

Origin of Shawnee

1720–30, back formation from earlier Shawnese, Shawanese (construed as plural), reshaping (with -ese ) of earlier Shawanoes (plural) < Munsee Delaware šá·wano·w (singular) < Shawnee ša·wano·ki Shawnees, literally, people of the south

Example Sentences

Shawnee Smith in "Saw" However, we’d be remiss if we didn’t consider the “Saw” movies, which sit at the other end of Perkins’ spectrum of pastiche.

From Salon • Feb. 26, 2025

Recent members include everyone from the romance-oriented That’s What She Read in Mount Ayr, Iowa; to Seven Stories in Shawnee, Kansas, managed by 15-year-old Halley Vincent; to more than 20 Black-owned shops.

From Seattle Times • May 23, 2024

And when chiseled turkey bones were unearthed on Tennessee land once inhabited by the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Shawnee and Yuchi peoples, archaeologists weren’t sure if they were for tattooing, medicinal uses or leatherworking.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 28, 2024

AI can never replicate the quality of humans when it comes to storytelling, argues Shawnee Gibbs.

From BBC • Jan. 10, 2024

Faced with this ever-growing flood of squatters, two Shawnee brothers, Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, began building a larger, more cohesive Indigenous resistance.

From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz