Meanings
nounLumbee (plural Lumbees or Lumbee)
plural Lumbees
- A member of a certain Native American tribe or group of North Carolina.
proper noun
- The dialect (of English) spoken by the Lumbee people.
Origin
- psybee“bend”
- EnglishLumbee
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”).
More words from psy
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
APA
Lumbee. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Lumbee
MLA
“Lumbee.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Lumbee. Accessed November 3, 2026.
Chicago
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Lumbee,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Lumbee.
Source: Lumbee on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.