Word.ws English Dictionary

Paumanok

Paumanok proper noun: long Island.

Proper noun

Paumanok

  1. (poetic) Long Island.

Origin of Paumanok

From an Algonquian name for the area. First recorded on May 3, 1639, in a deed between Lion Gardiner and "Yovawan, Sachem of Pommanocc". Thereafter variously spelled Pamunke (1648), Pammanack (1656), Pawmanack (1658), Paumanuck and Paumanche (1659), and Pommanock (1665), and later Paumanack and Pomonok (preserved as the name of a neighborhood in Flushing in Queens); and then popularized in the spelling Paumanok by Walt Whitman. The precise origin of the name is not entirely clear, but the source language has been suggested to be Lenape (Munsee), and the first element has been suggested to be related to Massachusett pummunnum (“s/he gives away; offers, devotes”), paumpaummunum (“s/he offers it habitually or by custom”), and Narragansett pummenum- (“contribute”), with the final element probably a locative, making the name "land of tribute" (which had to pay tribute, or where wampum shells for paying tribute were obtained).

Questions about Paumanok

What does Paumanok mean?
Paumanok means long Island.
What part of speech is Paumanok?
Paumanok is a proper noun.

Words near Paumanok in the dictionary

  1. paultry
  2. Pauly
  3. Paulínia
  4. paum
  5. Pauma
  6. Paumanok
  7. Paumari
  8. paumed
  9. pauming
  10. Paumotu
  11. Paumotuan

Source and license

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