■ noun ( plural same or ~s )
1》 a member of an indigenous people inhabiting northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and eastern Siberia.
2》 either of the two main languages of the ~ (Inuit and Yupik), comprising a major division of the ~-Aleut family.
■ adjective relating to the ~ or their languages.
Origin
an Algonquian word, perh. in the sense 'people speaking a different language'.
Usage
In recent years, the word ~ has come to be regarded by some as offensive: the peoples inhabiting the regions from NW Canada to western Greenland prefer to call themselves Inuit . The term ~ , however, continues to be the only term which can be properly understood as applying to the people as a whole and is still widely used in anthropological and archaeological contexts.