squaw
/skwɔː/ noun
Forms squaws
Etymology
From Massachusett squàw (“woman”), from Proto-Algonquian *eθkwe·wa (“(young) woman”). Cognate with Abenaki -skwa (“female, wife”), Mohegan-Pequot sqá, Cree iskwew / ᐃᐢᑫᐧᐤ (iskeyw, “woman”), Ojibwe ikwe (“woman”). In the 1970s, some non-linguists began to claim that the word originally meant vagina; this has been discredited.
The first English attestation of the word is found in a book called Mourt’s Relation: A Journey of the Pilgrims at Plymouth written in 1622, where the "squa sachim or Massachusets Queen" is mentioned in a journal entry from September 20, 1621.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A female; a woman; --in the language of Indian tribes of the Algonquin family, correlative of sannup. Old squaw. (Zoöl.) See under Old.
Etymology [Massachusetts Indian squa, eshqua; Narragansett squâws; Delaware ochqueu, and khqueu; used also in compound words (as the names of animals) in the sense of female.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “squaw”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details