/wahm'peuh noh"ag/ , n. , pl. Wampanoags , ( esp. collectively ) Wampanoag .
1. a member of a once-powerful North American Indian people who inhabited the area east of Narragansett Bay from Rhode Island to Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket at the time of the Pilgrim settlement.
2. the Eastern Algonquian speech of the Wampanoag people, a dialect of Massachusett.
[ 1670-80, Amer.; wa·pan ( w )- dawn + - o·w - person of + *- aki pl. suffix, i.e., easterners ]