Lumbee
noun
Lumbee is a noun meaning “A member of a certain Native American tribe or group of North Carolina” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled L-U-M-B-E-E, and it appears about once in every 36 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of Lumbee is Lumbees.
What does Lumbee mean?
noun
- 1
A member of a certain Native American tribe or group of North Carolina.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of Lumbee
- Lumbees plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is Lumbee?
Lumbee appears about once in every 36 million words in written English, the 184,844th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does Lumbee come from?
Uncertain. Said to be first attested in reference to the tribe in 1914. Supposed by some to be of Siouan origin. Thought by others to have been coined by Turkey Tayac (1895-1978, the twenty-seventh hereditary chief of the Piscataway) as a combination of Lumber (“a river that flows through the tribe's lands”) and Piscataway bee (“bend”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).