Word.ws English Dictionary

cayuse

/ˈkaɪuːs/

cayuse noun: a small Indian horse or pony.

cayuse: a small Indian horse or pony
Image: Anonymous engraver, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

cayuse (plural cayuses)

  1. (US) A small Indian horse or pony.

Noun (2) capitalized: Cayuse

Cayuse pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) A Native American tribe of Oregon.

Forms of cayuse

pluralcayuses

Origin of cayuse

Named after the Cayuse tribe of the Pacific Northwest. However, the etymology of this tribe name is unknown; it may be an exonym, and may in fact come from Spanish caballo (“horse”), which is the source of the word for horse in many Native American languages of western North America.

Adapted from French cailloux, a pre-existing French word. The reason this word came to be used for the tribe is unknown; see the Wikipedia article for theories.

Phrases with cayuse

Questions about cayuse

What does cayuse mean?
Cayuse means a small Indian horse or pony.
What part of speech is cayuse?
Cayuse is a noun.
How do you pronounce cayuse?
Cayuse is pronounced /ˈkaɪuːs/.
What is the plural of cayuse?
The plural of cayuse is cayuses.

Words near cayuse in the dictionary

  1. cayucos
  2. Cayuga
  3. Cayuga County
  4. Cayugan
  5. Cayugas
  6. cayuse
  7. Cayuse physa
  8. Cayuse physae
  9. Cayuse physas
  10. cayuses
  11. Cayuvava

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cayuse (page history and authors); Cayuse (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cayuse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cayuse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.