petun
petun noun: tobacco, especially in the context of its early acquisition from Native Americans by the French.
Noun (1)
petun
Noun (2) capitalized: Petun
Petun (plural Petuns or Petun)
- A member of the Iroquoian "tobacco people", or Tionontati, a First Nation located on the southwest edge of the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, west of the Huron territory in Southern Ontario.
- During the 1650s, the Senecas, Cayugas, and Onondagas expanded their war against the Hurons to include the Petuns, Neutrals, and Eries, in part because these Indian nations offered asylum to refugee bands of Hurons, but also because ...2006, Daniel P. Barr, Unconquered: The Iroquois League at War in Colonial America, Greenwood Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 50
- We might always wonder about when the first meeting between a Petun and a European actually took place. Could there have been some Petun travellers in the St. Lawrence Valley visiting with St. Lawrence Iroquoians ...2014, Charles Garrad, Petun to Wyandot: The Ontario Petun from the Sixteenth Century, University of Ottawa Press, →ISBN, page 155
Forms of petun
| plural | Petuns |
|---|---|
| plural | Petun |
Origin of petun
From French pétun, from Tupian.
From French pétun or English petun, an early name for tobacco, which the people grew and traded.
Questions about petun
- What does petun mean?
- Petun means tobacco, especially in the context of its early acquisition from Native Americans by the French.
- What part of speech is petun?
- Petun is a noun.
- What is the plural of petun?
- The plural of petun is Petuns.
Words near petun in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: petun (page history and authors); Petun (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “petun.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/petun. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.