Word.ws English Dictionary

Indian giving

Indian giving noun: the act of demanding the return of a gifted item or taking back something that was previously given, or expecting something in return.

Noun

Indian giving (uncountable)

  1. (derogatory, informal, offensive) The act of demanding the return of a gifted item or taking back something that was previously given, or expecting something in return.

Origin of Indian giving

From Meriwether Lewis' and William Clarke's misunderstanding of how Native Americans traded: a tribe that traded beads for a dog might later trade the dog back to its original owner, expecting something (such as the beads) in return, and taking it if it was not offered.

Questions about Indian giving

What does Indian giving mean?
Indian giving means the act of demanding the return of a gifted item or taking back something that was previously given, or expecting something in return.
What part of speech is Indian giving?
Indian giving is a noun.

Words near Indian giving in the dictionary

  1. Indian ginger
  2. Indian gingers
  3. Indian ginseng
  4. Indian giver
  5. Indian givers
  6. Indian giving
  7. Indian golden oriole
  8. Indian golden orioles
  9. Indian gooseberries
  10. Indian gooseberry
  11. Indian goosegrass

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Indian giving (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: “Indian giving.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/indian_giving. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.