Choctaw
Americannoun
plural
Choctaws,plural
Choctaw-
a member of a large Muskhogean tribe of North American Indians, formerly living chiefly in southern Mississippi, now in Oklahoma.
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the language of the Choctaw, closely related to Chickasaw.
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Informal: Offensive. something unintelligible, as speech, illegible handwriting, or an ineffectual explanation; gibberish.
My best efforts at clarity were Choctaw to him.
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Figure Skating. choctaw, a type of turn that changes the skater’s orientation in either direction, from skating forward to backward or backward to forward, with a change of foot from right to left or left to right, and a change of edge from outside to inside or inside to outside.
The quickstep compulsory dance requires a choctaw from the forward outside edge of the skating foot to the backward inside edge of the other foot.
adjective
noun
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a member of a Native American people of Alabama
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the language of this people, belonging to the Muskogean family
noun
Etymology
Origin of Choctaw
First recorded in 1720–30; from Choctaw chahta, a self-designation of unknown meaning
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“My grandfather was Choctaw and he always taught us to live with nature. If we’d learn to listen and look and feel instead of trying to control, more of our houses would still be here.”
From Los Angeles Times
From the presence of the Indigenous Choctaw people to the segregated sides of the same street, Coogler paints a picture of 1930s America with a documentarian’s brush.
From Los Angeles Times
Native Americans have held widely divergent views about citizenship and voting, said Torey Dolan, a research fellow at the University of Wisconsin Law School and citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
From Seattle Times
Gibson, a Mississippi Choctaw with Cherokee descent, is the first Native American to represent the United States solo at the Venice Biennale, the world’s oldest contemporary art show.
From Seattle Times
Titled “the space in which to place me,” the show is a mini-survey of the rapturous art of the queer Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson.
From New York Times
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
