Word.ws English Dictionary

Seneca Village

Seneca Village proper noun: a former village in Manhattan, New York City, New York County, New York State, United States; a settlement of freed slaves and other African Americans, also containing non-WASP European immigrants, demolished to make way for Central Park.

Proper noun

Seneca Village

  1. (historical) A former village in Manhattan, New York City, New York County, New York State, United States; a settlement of freed slaves and other African Americans, also containing non-WASP European immigrants, demolished to make way for Central Park.
    • The preacher grandfather had been one of the Seneca Village elders, ministering to the free Negro community downtown.2021, Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle, Fleet, page 68

Origin of Seneca Village

Seneca+village. Unknown. Possibly from Latin Seneca; or from Portuguese Senegal of unknown West African origin; or from Dutch Sennecaas from Algonquian indigenous American term. The Seneca were a native tribe found in the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, which may have been an origin of the name. There had been a tradition of naming African American slaves with Classical names, which may give rise to the term Seneca. The freed slaves may have had a memory of their origin in West Africa and the locale name Senegal.

Questions about Seneca Village

What does Seneca Village mean?
Seneca Village means a former village in Manhattan, New York City, New York County, New York State, United States; a settlement of freed slaves and other African Americans, also containing non-WASP European immigrants, demolished to make way for Central Park.
What part of speech is Seneca Village?
Seneca Village is a proper noun.

Words near Seneca Village in the dictionary

  1. Seneca Falls
  2. Seneca oil
  3. Seneca root
  4. Seneca roots
  5. Seneca snakeroot
  6. Seneca Village
  7. Senecal
  8. Senecals
  9. Senecan
  10. Senecas
  11. senecavirus

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Seneca Village (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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