Unnumbered source etymology
Original entry ↗A woman, wife; especially a Native American woman.
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.
Relationships mentioned by the source
These are extracted mentions, not a timeline or a verified sequence of immediate parents.
Inspect preserved source fields
Raw extraction fields are retained for auditing. Their order does not establish ancestry.
{
"templates": [
{
"name": "bor",
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "wam",
"3": "squàw",
"t": "woman"
},
"expansion": "Massachusett squàw (“woman”)"
},
{
"name": "der",
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "alg-pro",
"3": "*eθkwe·wa",
"4": "",
"5": "(young) woman"
},
"expansion": "Proto-Algonquian *eθkwe·wa (“(young) woman”)"
},
{
"name": "cog",
"args": {
"1": "abe",
"2": "-skwa",
"3": "",
"4": "female, wife"
},
"expansion": "Abenaki -skwa (“female, wife”)"
},
{
"name": "cog",
"args": {
"1": "xpq",
"2": "sqá"
},
"expansion": "Mohegan-Pequot sqá"
},
{
"name": "cog",
"args": {
"1": "cr",
"2": "iskwew"
},
"expansion": "Cree iskwew"
},
{
"name": "cog",
"args": {
"1": "oj",
"2": "ikwe",
"3": "",
"4": "woman"
},
"expansion": "Ojibwe ikwe (“woman”)"
}
],
"links": [
[
"squàw",
"squàw#Massachusett"
],
[
"*eθkwe·wa",
"Reconstruction:Proto-Algonquian/eθkwe·wa"
],
[
"-skwa",
"-skwa#Abenaki"
],
[
"sqá",
"sqá#Mohegan-Pequot"
],
[
"iskwew",
"iskwew#Cree"
],
[
"ᐃᐢᑫᐧᐤ",
"ᐃᐢᑫᐧᐤ#Cree"
],
[
"ikwe",
"ikwe#Ojibwe"
]
],
"references": [],
"descendants": [],
"lexical": [
{
"pos": "noun",
"glosses": [
"A woman, wife; especially a Native American woman."
],
"tags": [
"ethnic",
"offensive",
"slur"
],
"recordId": "e35b82a1c053a1925c8a31836e5623ff06f4ea99e2e188b84c583370f9378faf",
"rawRecordSha256": "1af9bb85ac8426111dbe4b6cd0b614ebc6bb15d2d5de1713fbfeb797b249670b",
"sourceRecordOrdinal": 239835
}
],
"omittedAuxiliaryFields": {
"templates": 0,
"links": 0,
"references": 0,
"descendants": 0,
"lexicalRecords": 0,
"lexicalSenses": 0,
"glosses": 0
}
}