Zuni
noun
a member of a group of North American Indians inhabiting the largest of the Indian pueblos, in western New Mexico.
Zuni
American
[zoo-nee]
/ ˈzu ni /
Also
Zuñi
noun
-
Zunis,
plural
-
Zuni
plural
-
a member of a group of North American Indians inhabiting the largest of the Indian pueblos, in western New Mexico.
-
the language of the Zuni.
Zuñi
British
/ ˈzuːnjiː, ˈsuː- /
noun
-
a member of a North American Indian people of W New Mexico
-
the language of this people, a member of the Penutian phylum of languages
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of Zuni
An Americanism first recorded in 1830–35; earlier Zuñi, from Spanish (southwestern United States), from Acoma Keresan sɨ̂·ni (pronounced sθɨ̂·nyi ) or a cognate
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:
Denied entrance by the Zuni inhabitants, the starving Spaniards decided to attack.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 28, 2026
He joined a team digging for dinosaur fossils in the Zuni Basin in New Mexico.
From NewsForKids.net ● Jun. 3, 2024
Zuni farmers in the southwestern United States made it through long stretches of extremely low rainfall between A.D.
From Salon ● Feb. 26, 2024
He’s hopeful that young Zuni could find peace and healing on the Cottonwood Wash.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 3, 2024
He took the medicine into the Zuni mountains.
From "Ceremony:" by Leslie Marmon Silko
The Hopi and Zuñi tribes of Arizona and the modern Pueblo people of northern New Mexico are their descendants.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018
Moqui and Zuñi resistance.—The reconquest of the New Mexico pueblos had been effected by Vargas at the end of the seventeenth century.
From The Colonization of North America 1492-1783 by Herbert Eugene Bolton
One of the four survivors of the ill-starred expedition of De Narvaez in 1527 was the Negro Estevanico, to whom belongs the credit of the discovery of the Zuñi Indians and of New Mexico.
From Your Negro Neighbor by Benjamin Griffith Brawley
Next to the Moki towns, the Pueblo of Zuñi maintained its primitive customs to the greatest extent, and from similar causes.
From Indian Stories Retold From St. Nicholas by Various
The Zuñi folk-tales collected by Frank Cushing have much of this element in them, and it constitutes one of their many charms.
From Literature in the Elementary School by Porter Lander MacClintock
Coronado survived the fight with the Zunis at Hawikku.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 28, 2026
The Zunis rained stones down on the invaders; one well-aimed boulder struck Coronado’s helmet.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 28, 2026
They worked as coal miners, train mechanics, barkeeps, cowpunchers, lumberjacks, shepherds and Indian traders — Slavs, Italians, Finns, Russians, Irish, Greeks, Mexicans, Navajos and Zunis.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 3, 2017
Last month 1,000 Navajos and 300 Zunis went a-nutting in small canvas-covered wagons.
From Time Magazine Archive
That was the warning the old Zunis, and Hopis, and Navajos had about Gallup.
From "Ceremony:" by Leslie Marmon Silko
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.
