Word.ws English Dictionary

Paleo-Eskimo

US/ˌpeɪlioʊˈɛskɪmoʊ/

Paleo-Eskimo noun: the inhabitants and/or native cultures of the North American Arctic region before the rise of the modern Eskimo cultures in the region; the Saqqaq, Independence I and II, and/or Dorset cultures and peoples.

Noun

Paleo-Eskimo pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) The inhabitants and/or native cultures of the North American Arctic region before the rise of the modern Eskimo cultures in the region; the Saqqaq, Independence I and II, and/or Dorset cultures and peoples.

Forms of Paleo-Eskimo

alternative formPalaeo-Eskimo
alternative formPalaeoeskimo
alternative formPaleoeskimo

Origin of Paleo-Eskimo

From paleo- (“old, primeval”) + Eskimo. The scholar David J. Meltzer writes that the people are "badly named: there is nothing to indicate they are ancestral Eskimo or spoke an Eskimo language; today's Eskimo refer to them as the Tuniit".

Questions about Paleo-Eskimo

What does Paleo-Eskimo mean?
Paleo-Eskimo means the inhabitants and/or native cultures of the North American Arctic region before the rise of the modern Eskimo cultures in the region; the Saqqaq, Independence I and II, and/or Dorset cultures and peoples.
What part of speech is Paleo-Eskimo?
Paleo-Eskimo is a noun.
How do you pronounce Paleo-Eskimo?
Paleo-Eskimo is pronounced /ˌpeɪlioʊˈɛskɪmoʊ/ (US).

Words near Paleo-Eskimo in the dictionary

  1. Paleo-Americans
  2. Paleo-Balkan
  3. paleo-diet
  4. paleo-earthquake
  5. paleo-eolian
  6. Paleo-Eskimo
  7. paleo-high
  8. paleo-highs
  9. Paleo-Indian
  10. Paleo-Indians
  11. paleo-ocean

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Paleo-Eskimo (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: “Paleo-Eskimo.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/paleo-eskimo. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.