Zeitgeist · Word of the day · Blog · Random word

sipapu

Definitions · Examples · Pronunciations · Etymologies · Related · Statistics · Comments (1) ·

“

So what happens if a science teacher tells the precious moppets about the Hopi creation myth (hint -- we crawled out of a hole in the ground (sipapu)) or Norse, or ....

—ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science

View all »
Definitions (1)

American Heritage Dictionary

Century Dictionary (1)

An opening somewhere in the Grand Canon of the Colorado, according to the legends of the Hopi, through which they reached the surface of the earth; also, its symbolic representation on altars, kivas, and other objects. The Snake chief at Cipaulovi has no tiponi, and consequently no altar. The only objects at the end of the kiva, where the altar would have been had he possessed a tiponi, was a row of twenty snake whips leaning against the ledge of the rear wall, behind the sipapû. J. W. Fewkes, in An. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., 1894–95, p. 279.

GNU Webster's 1913

WordNet

Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (15)

So what happens if a science teacher tells the precious moppets about the Hopi creation myth (hint -- we crawled out of a hole in the ground (sipapu)) or Norse, or .... — ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science
"Out of the sipapu we all came," they say, "and back to the underworld, through the sipapu, we shall go when we die." — The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi
This hole symbolizes the sipapu or entrance to the underworld. — The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi
They circle the plaza four times, each stamping mightily upon the cover of the sipapu as they pass the Kisa. — The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi
They represent the traditional opening, or _sipapu_, through which, in Pueblo cosmogony, races crawled to the surface of the earth from an underworld. — Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744

More examples »

Tags

sipapu hasn't been tagged yet.

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 5 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

Add a related word »
Related

Etymologies (1)

Century Dictionary (1)

Hopi.

Pronunciations
Record your own »

If you'd like to prod us on getting a pronunciation for this word, sign in (or sign up) and let us know.

Charts

frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

We are still working on calculating this word's frequency.

Recently looked up

altitude · dote · dove-colored · burrito · carpus

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

embodies · silence · spell it rite · britney · bunda