Tlingit
Americannoun
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Tlingits,
plural
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Tlingit
plural
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a member of any of a number of Indigenous peoples of the coastal regions of southern Alaska and northern British Columbia.
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the language of the Tlingit, a Na-Dene language.
noun
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a member of a seafaring group of North American Indian peoples inhabiting S Alaska and N British Columbia
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the language of these peoples, belonging to the Na-Dene phylum
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of Tlingit
First recorded in 1865–70; from Tlingit tłingít “human being, person, Tlingit”
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:
“We are a far cry from where we were last year,” said Roald Helgesen, chief operating officer of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska based in Juneau.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2025
Ayers: Alaska’s beauty is unprecedented, and spending time in Glacier Bay National Park and the surrounding communities gives you a taste of the Tlingit and their culture.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 17, 2025
Hall was born into the Tlingit tribe in a small fishing village in Alaska.
From Salon ● Dec. 26, 2024
Yet North American societies like the Kwakwaka’wakw, Coast Salish, and Tlingit were seen as outliers on an evolutionary ladder that led from foraging to farming to complex states and the origins of modern society.
From Science Magazine ● Nov. 29, 2023
In their fright, the Tlingit fled into the forest and hid.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
Wrangell is one of the oldest non-Alaska Native settlements in the state — founded in 1811 when Russians began trading with Tlingits, according to a state database of Alaska communities.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 23, 2023
Tlingits, Russians, the British and Americans all accounted for historical influences on Wrangell.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 22, 2023
Totem poles were not objects of religious worship, but Tlingits considered them sacred, because they believed that everything in nature had a spirit, and because the poles commemorated significant people and events.
From The New Yorker ● Apr. 13, 2015
“To continue to evolve, and to maintain the sacred traditions of the different arts … that’s what Tlingits would have been doing regardless of a Western imposition or not. It’s what I do with poetry.”
From Washington Times ● Jul. 6, 2014
Even as late as 1861, 7800 Tlingits held 828 slaves.
From The Red Man's Continent: a chronicle of aboriginal America by Ellsworth Huntington
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.
