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malamute (MAL-uh-myoot) - n., an Alaskan breed of husky.
Thanks, WikiMedia!
A particularly large breed of husky, bred for hauling heavy freight sleds. The name (which English has used since the 1890s) is short for Malamute dog, which is named after the Malamute people, a subgroup of Inupiaq of the Kotzebue Sound region and Kobuk River valley. Where they got their name, I can't track down atm, but it's an Inupiaq endonym. [Sidebar 1: To oversimplify a confusing situation and nomenclature system, the Inupiaq are those Inuit peoples who live in Northern Alaska, in contrast to those Inuit who live in Canada and the Greenlandic Inuit who live in, well, Greenland -- the modern nation boundaries happen to nearly align with borders between cultural and linguistic zones.] [Sidebar 2: I should have addressed this by now, but the Inuit, Yupik, and Aleut peoples, formerly all collectively called Eskimo, have a separate heritage from all other Indigenous peoples of the Americas, having crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia much later, "only" around 3000* years ago.]
* Exact timing disputed.
---L.
Thanks, WikiMedia!
A particularly large breed of husky, bred for hauling heavy freight sleds. The name (which English has used since the 1890s) is short for Malamute dog, which is named after the Malamute people, a subgroup of Inupiaq of the Kotzebue Sound region and Kobuk River valley. Where they got their name, I can't track down atm, but it's an Inupiaq endonym. [Sidebar 1: To oversimplify a confusing situation and nomenclature system, the Inupiaq are those Inuit peoples who live in Northern Alaska, in contrast to those Inuit who live in Canada and the Greenlandic Inuit who live in, well, Greenland -- the modern nation boundaries happen to nearly align with borders between cultural and linguistic zones.] [Sidebar 2: I should have addressed this by now, but the Inuit, Yupik, and Aleut peoples, formerly all collectively called Eskimo, have a separate heritage from all other Indigenous peoples of the Americas, having crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia much later, "only" around 3000* years ago.]
* Exact timing disputed.
---L.
