Word.ws English Dictionary

Spokane

/spoʊˈkæn/

Spokane noun: a Native American Plateau tribe who inhabited the eastern portion of Washington state and parts of northern Idaho.

Noun

Spokane pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) A Native American Plateau tribe who inhabited the eastern portion of Washington state and parts of northern Idaho.

Proper noun

Spokane

  1. The language of the Spokane tribe, a member of the Salish (or Salishan) language family.
  2. A large city, the county seat of Spokane County, Washington.
  3. A tributary of the Columbia River in Washington and Idaho.
  4. Any of various other places in the United States.

Origin of Spokane

A number of etymologies of the name have been proposed, most frequently “Sun children”, “children of the Sun”, or “muddy people”. According to Barry Pritzker (2011), these interpretations are most probably popular etymologies derived from an actual self-designation of Spokane Spoqe'ind (“round head”).

Words formed from Spokane

Questions about Spokane

What does Spokane mean?
Spokane means a Native American Plateau tribe who inhabited the eastern portion of Washington state and parts of northern Idaho.
What part of speech is Spokane?
Spokane can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Spokane?
Spokane is pronounced /spoʊˈkæn/.

Words near Spokane in the dictionary

  1. spoilt somebody rotten
  2. spoilt someone rotten
  3. spoilt the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar
  4. Spok
  5. Spokan
  6. Spokane
  7. Spokane County
  8. Spokane Valley
  9. Spokanite
  10. Spokanites
  11. spoke

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Spokane (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-Spokane.ogg.

Cite this entry: “Spokane.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spokane. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.