Shoshone
Americannoun
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Shoshones,
plural
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Shoshone
plural
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a river in NW Wyoming, flowing NE into the Big Horn River. 120 miles (193 km) long.
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a member of any of several Numic-speaking peoples of California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming.
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the language or languages of the Shoshone.
noun
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a member of a North American Indian people of the southwestern US, related to the Aztecs
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the language of this people, belonging to the Uto-Aztecan family
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of Shoshone
An Americanism dating back to 1805; < an Eastern Shoshone band name
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:
Others—including York, Clark’s enslaved manservant, and Sacagawea, a kidnapped Shoshone teenager pregnant with the child of the expedition’s interpreter, Charbonneau—did not have a say in the matter.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026
To choose the name, the research team, led by University of Utah biology professor Michael Werner, worked with the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 10, 2026
Another focus is the history of Indigenous people, the Paiute and Shoshone, who decades before L.A.’s water grab saw their ancestral lands taken and occupied by white settlers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 15, 2024
The Paiute and Shoshone suffered after the arrival of settlers, including in 1863, when troops forced nearly 1,000 Native people to march out of the valley to Fort Tejon, about 175 miles away.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 15, 2024
In fact, there is nothing in sight except for the forested darkness of Shoshone County.
From "A Heart in a Body in the World" by Deb Caletti
Once, he tells you, this was the land of the Shoshones.
From Salon ● Jun. 17, 2018
You have to ford numerous rivers, and the Shoshones, Pawnees and Sioux, were extremely adept at helping the pioneers make these fords.
From National Geographic ● Jul. 12, 2015
With unemployment on the reservation at 70 percent, the leases represent needed income for some of the 3,500 Eastern Shoshones and 9,600 Northern Arapahoes, he said.
From Reuters ● Dec. 20, 2011
Aleek-chea-ahoosh's training as a warrior began when he was a few years old, for the Crows were surrounded with enemies: Sioux, Arapahos, Blackfeet, Piegans, Cheyennes, Shoshones, Flatheads, Gros Ventres.
From Time Magazine Archive
The Shoshones, Arapahoes, and Crows had forgotten their old animosities, and were traveling with Buffalo Bill, going to college, and raising alfalfa under the direction of a government farmer.
From The Rustler of Wind River by George W. (George Washington) Ogden
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.
