Meanings
plural Lenapes
- A member of a group of aboriginal Americans who were living in what is now New Jersey and along the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, the coast of Delaware, and the lower Hudson Valley and New York Harbor in New York, at the time of the arrival of the Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Endless generations of Lenape stretching down the lines of the past—changed, though not destroyed, by colonialism.
2020, N. K. Jemisin, The City We Became, Orbit, page 299Synonyms: Leni-Lanape, Lenni-Lanape, Leni-Lenape, Lenni-Lenape, Delaware
Synonyms & antonyms
nounA member of a group of aboriginal Americans who were living in what is now New Jersey and along the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, the coast of Delaware, and the lower Hudson Valley and New York Harbor in New York, at the time of the arrival of the Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
proper nounThe language spoken in the southern range of this group in coastal Delaware, southern New Jersey, and eastern Pennsylvania; Unami.
More synonyms by meaning
nouna member of an Algonquian people formerly living in New Jersey and New York and parts of Delaware and Pennsylvania
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
- UnamiLënape
- EnglishLenape
Borrowed from Unami Lënape / lënape.
More words from Unami
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
Lenape. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Lenape
“Lenape.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Lenape. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Lenape,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Lenape.
Source: Lenape on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.