Word.ws English Dictionary

squaw

/skwɔː/

squaw noun: a woman, wife; especially a Native American woman.

Noun

squaw (plural squaws)

  1. (ethnic, offensive, slur) A woman, wife; especially a Native American woman.
    • "If I ever set eyes on that savage again, I'll kill him. You know that, don't you, you damn squaw?" She shrugged. "Talk's cheap."1950, Dorothy M. Johnson, Flame on the Frontier; in Indian Country, London: Corgi, 1961, page 29
    • The Indian maids, of course, turned out to be a few fat old squaws who knew all about white men.1963, Lester del Rey, The Sky Is Falling

Forms of squaw

pluralsquaws

Origin of squaw

From Massachusett squàw (“woman”), from Proto-Algonquian *eθkwe·wa (“(young) woman”). Cognate with Abenaki -skwa (“female, wife”), Mohegan-Pequot sqá, Cree iskwew / ᐃᐢᑫᐧᐤ (iskeyw, “woman”), Ojibwe ikwe (“woman”). In the 1970s, some non-linguists began to claim that the word originally meant vagina; this has been discredited. The first English attestation of the word is found in a book called Mourt’s Relation: A Journey of the Pilgrims at Plymouth written in 1622, where the "squa sachim or Massachusets Queen" is mentioned in a journal entry from September 20, 1621.

Words formed from squaw

Phrases with squaw

2 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with squaw

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about squaw

What does squaw mean?
Squaw means a woman, wife; especially a Native American woman.
What part of speech is squaw?
Squaw is a noun.
How do you pronounce squaw?
Squaw is pronounced /skwɔː/.
What is the plural of squaw?
The plural of squaw is squaws.

Words near squaw in the dictionary

  1. squattocracy
  2. squattocratic
  3. squatty
  4. squatty potties
  5. squatty potty
  6. squaw
  7. squaw berries
  8. squaw berry
  9. squaw candy
  10. squaw carpet
  11. squaw carpets

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: squaw (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-squaw.wav.

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