Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A frame hut covered with matting, as of bark or brush, used by nomadic Native Americans of North America.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Hence any small hut or shanty.
  • noun An American Indian house or hut; especially, a rude hut, as of brushwood, such as is built by the Apaches and other low tribes: in distinction from the tepee of skins stretched on stacked lodge-poles. Wickiups are built on the spot as required, and are not moved.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Vars of wikiup.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A domed hut, similar to a wigwam, used by some semi-nomadic Native American tribes, particularly in the southwestern and western United States.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a lodge consisting of a frame covered with matting or brush; used by nomadic American Indians in the southwestern United States

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Fox wi·kiya·pi, house, from Proto-Algonquian *wi·kiwa·ˀmi.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Though wickiups were built by many different tribes, the word apparently comes from wiikiyaapi or wikiyapy meaning "lodge" or "house" in the Sac and Fox or Mesquakie language." "Wickiups" could be found in the Southwestern United States region. More specifically the term was present "among Native Americans in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, and California" and originated from the Sac and Fox, two dialects of the same language that belong to the Algonquian language family. Algonquian, a language spoken by many tribes, should not to be confused with Algonquin, the people of a tribe closer to Ottawa. By 2007 the language was spoken by about seven hundred members of the tribe in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. Perhaps a variant of wikiwam ‘wigwam’.

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Examples

  • a tree, and have erected a "wickiup" of green pine boughs overlapping like a thatched roof, which will turn off the rain if it comes, and I have advised the others of our party to make similar preparations for a rain.

    The Discovery of Yellowstone Park Nathaniel Pitt Langford 1871

  • But I must have been drunker, for presently he carried me home in one hand (I weighed about fourteen stone then) and dropped me into my wickiup-through the roof, not the door, unfortunately.

    Isabelle Estelle Bruno 2010

  • We must find a pretty, secluded spot, he snarled, and build a bower for my bride's reception; we lit on a little pine grove by a brook, and there we built a wickiup-or rather, he did, while I got in the way and made helpful suggestions, and he damned the day he'd ever seen me-and stored it with food and blankets and cooking gear.

    Isabelle Estelle Bruno 2010

  • At the same time he'd no idea of what Spain or Britain or the United States or even Texas really were-dammit, he thought the whole white race was only ten thousand strong, and obviously imagined Queen Victoria living in a wickiup somewhere over the hills.

    Isabelle Estelle Bruno 2010

  • They can be just as pert and hoity-toity in a Mimbreno wickiup as they can in a Belgravia drawing-room, believe me.

    Isabelle Estelle Bruno 2010

  • Well, this was news to me, of course, although her conduct in the wickiup had suggested that she had some such arrangement in mind.

    Isabelle Estelle Bruno 2010

  • We told the young Greenpeace fund raiser that due to the "low budge = no budget" Rupert Murdock style fiscal philosophy practiced by most of the liberal web site publishers, I couldn't actually give her some dinero, but I could dash right back to my wickiup and pound out a sympathetic column on my new (used) laptop.

    Printing: Will Republicans rally to save the white bears? 2010

  • She was reclining on a blanket at the door of the wickiup, on one elbow, that sturdy little brown body a-gleam in the fireglow as though it had been oiled, and not a stitch on except for the patterned head-band above the cinnamon eyes that gleamed like hot coals, and the tight white leggings that came up to her hips.

    Isabelle Estelle Bruno 2010

  • We told the young Greenpeace fund raiser that due to the "low budge = no budget" Rupert Murdock style fiscal philosophy practiced by most of the liberal web site publishers, I couldn't actually give her some dinero, but I could dash right back to my wickiup and pound out a sympathetic column on my new (used) laptop.

    OpEdNews - Diary: Will Republicans rally to save the white bears? 2010

  • After the funeral, the Yawner told me I must take my pony to Sonsee-array's wickiup and leave it there-so I did, watched by the whole village, and madam ignored it.

    Isabelle Estelle Bruno 2010

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