Wampum : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

English Dictionary: Wampum	by the DICT Development Group
3 results for Wampum
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
wampum n informal terms for money [syn: boodle, bread, cabbage, clams, dinero, dough, gelt, kale, lettuce, lolly, lucre, loot, moolah, pelf, scratch, shekels, simoleons, sugar, wampum] small cylindrical beads made from polished shells and fashioned into strings or belts; used by certain Native American peoples as jewelry or currency Synonym(s): wampum, peag, wampumpeag
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Wampum \Wam"pum\, n. [North American Indian wampum, wompam, from the Mass. w[a2]mpi, Del. w[be]pe, white.] Beads made of shells, used by the North American Indians as money, and also wrought into belts, etc., as an ornament. Round his waist his belt of wampum. --Longfellow. Girded with his wampum braid. --Whittier. Note: These beads were of two kinds, one white, and the other black or dark purple. The term wampum is properly applied only to the white; the dark purple ones are called suckanhock. See {Seawan}. [bd]It [wampum] consisted of cylindrical pieces of the shells of testaceous fishes, a quarter of an inch long, and in diameter less than a pipestem, drilled . . . so as to be strung upon a thread. The beads of a white color, rated at half the value of the black or violet, passed each as the equivalent of a farthing in transactions between the natives and the planters.[b8] --Palfrey.
From U.S. Gazetteer (1990) [gazetteer]:
Wampum, PA (borough, FIPS 80880) Location: 40.88647 N, 80.33880 W Population (1990): 666 (308 housing units) Area: 2.4 sq km (land), 0.1 sq km (water) Zip code(s): 16157