Word.ws English Dictionary

wetu

/ˈwi.tu/

wetu noun: a dwelling, a domed hut similar to a wigwam, used by some Native Americans in the northeastern United States, especially the Wampanoag.

Noun

wetu (plural wetus or wetu)

  1. (US) A dwelling, a domed hut similar to a wigwam, used by some Native Americans in the northeastern United States, especially the Wampanoag.
    • Wetus ranged in size between about 10 to 15 feet in diameter. As many as ten people lived inside.2001, Donald M. Silver, Patricia J. Wynne, The Pilgrims, the Mayflower & more; grades 1-3, page 17
    • To make a wetu, the Wampanoag set poles made from cedar saplings into the ground. They bent the poles over and covered them with cattail reeds or bark. A wetu was either circular or oval. Most wetu were about 20 to 30 feet (6 to 9 meters) […]2003, Janet Riehecky, The Wampanoag: The People of the First Light, page 13

Examples of wetu in a sentence

  • Wetus were commonly about 12 feet (3.7 m) wide and 14 to 20 feet (4.3 to 6.1 m) long.2005, Janey Levy, The Wampanoag of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, page 22:
  • In one corner of the village a man is emerging from a sweat-house; in the village's center a child sleeps in a wetu while a little boy on the roof hides from his dog, their only domesticated animal.2008, Frances H. Kennedy, American Indian Places: A Historical Guidebook, page 31:

Forms of wetu

pluralwetus
pluralwetu

Origin of wetu

Borrowed from Massachusett wetu.

Questions about wetu

What does wetu mean?
Wetu means a dwelling, a domed hut similar to a wigwam, used by some Native Americans in the northeastern United States, especially the Wampanoag.
How do you use wetu in a sentence?
Wetus were commonly about 12 feet (3.7 m) wide and 14 to 20 feet (4.3 to 6.1 m) long.
What part of speech is wetu?
Wetu is a noun.
How do you pronounce wetu?
Wetu is pronounced /ˈwi.tu/.
What is the plural of wetu?
The plural of wetu is wetus.

Words near wetu in the dictionary

  1. Wetton
  2. Wettons
  3. Wettstein
  4. Wettsteinian
  5. Wettsteins
  6. wetu
  7. Wetumpka
  8. Wetuppa
  9. wetus
  10. Wetwang
  11. wetware

Source and license

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