Mobiliann.adj.
/məʊˈbɪlɪən/, U.S. /moʊˈbɪlj(ə)n/, /moʊˈbɪliən/ Now chiefly historical.
A. n.
1. † b. In some 19th-cent. usage: a speaker of a language of the Muskogean family. Obsolete.
a. A member of the Mobile of North America; = Mobile adj.2 1.
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1748 E. Bowen Map Georgia in W. Cummings & L. De Vorsey Southwest in Early Maps (ed. 3) Pl. 18 Mobiliens.
1760 T. Jefferys Nat. & Civil Hist. i. 165 The Taensas..withdrew to the neighborhood of the Mobilians, where we before took notice of them.
1899 H. B. Cushman Hist. Indians 73 That the Mobilians, as they were called by the early writers, were a clan of ancient Choctaws there can be no doubt whatever.
1922 Arrow Points Jan. 14 In later years, the Mobilians inhabited that region near to the point settled by the French in 1701.
1956 V. W. Crane Southern Frontier 69 A delegation of Choctaws arrived with the Mobilians to ask the French to join them in their war against the Chickasaw.
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1798 B. S. Barton New Views Origin Tribes & Nations Amer. (ed. 2) p. lxix The Mobiliens were settled to the east of the Missisippi, in the time of Soto.
1829 F. X. Martin Hist. Louisiana I. i. 11 Of the Indians..visited by Soto, the Tuscaloosas, Mobilians and Alabamians, are the only ones who, at this day retain their names.
1855 H. R. Schoolcraft Information Indian Tribes U.S. V. 68 He [sc. Charlevoix] specifies the Mobilians, or Choctaw-Chickasaw tribes, who had taken their fires from this altar.
2. A native or inhabitant of the city of Mobile.
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1775 J. Adair Hist. Amer. Indians 317 [The Choctaws] killed the strolling French pedlars,—turned out against the Missisippi Indians and Mobillians.
1887 Courier-Jrnl. (Louisville, Kentucky) 19 Jan. 6/1 Mobilians are jubilant over the new route cotton is taking, and have big hopes of an increase in the business.
1989 Callaloo No. 40. 446 Among them was one Mobilian who was a graduate of Oberlin and whose name was Ruthie Ariel Williams.
3. † b. In some 19th-cent. usage: = Muskogean n. Obsolete.
a. A pidgin form of Choctaw used as a lingua franca in parts of the south-eastern United States.
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1805 J. Sibley Rep. 5 Apr. in Amer. State Papers (1832) II. 724 Mobilian, which is spoken by all the Indians, from the east side of the Mississippi.
1814 H. M. Brackenridge Views Louisiana i. vi. 82 All these nations speak the Mobilian, which was formerly the court language amongst the Indian nations of Lower Louisiana.
1947 P. S. Martin et al. Indians before Columbus 68 In the Southeast a Choctaw jargon called ‘Mobilian’ was spoken from Florida to Louisiana and up the Mississippi River as far north as the Ohio.
1977 Language 53 259/2 On the basis of material recently recorded from surviving speakers..Haas shows Mobilian to be primarily a mixture of Choctaw and Alabama, with simplified morphology.
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the mind > language > languages of the world > pidgins and creoles > [noun] > other spec.
trade language1662
lingua franca1666
Mobilian1840
lingua geral1841
Nago1884
Papiamentu1895
Police Motu1933
Sango1948
Macanese1962
1840 G. Bancroft Hist. U.S. III. xxii. 249 The whole country south-east, south, and west of the Cherokees..was in the possession of one great family of nations, of which the language was named by the French the Mobilian, and is described by Gallatin as the Muskhogee-Chocta.
B. adj.
1. Designating or belonging to Mobilian (see sense A. 3a). Esp. in Mobilian Jargon, Mobilian trade language.
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the mind > language > languages of the world > pidgins and creoles > [adjective]
Mobilian1760
talkee-talkee1826
Sabir1867
Mobile1939
Krio1957
Sranan1957
Saramaccan1959
Sranan1960
Pitcairnese1964
Sranan Tongo1973
1760 T. Jefferys Nat. & Civil Hist. i. 162 The Taensas..speak a corrupted Chickasaws, called by the French the Mobilian language.
1884 A. S. Gatschet Creek Migration Legend i. 31 The Chicasa trade language, or, as the French called it, the Mobilian jargon.
1907 F. W. Hodge Handbk. Amer. Indians I. 916/1 The so-called Mobilian trade language was a corrupted Choctaw jargon used for the purposes of inter-tribal communication among all the tribes from Florida to Louisiana, extending northward on the Mississippi to about the junction of the Ohio. It was also known as the Chickasaw trade language.
1928 W. A. Read Indian Place-names Louisiana 6 The identity of Manchac with the Mobilian imashaka, ‘rear entrance’, is rendered more plausible by my discovery of the form Mashake.
1937 Amer. Speech 12 212 Besides the Shawnee words one Algonquian term has slipped in through the medium of the Mobilian trade language.
1989 C. R. Wilson & W. Ferris Encycl. Southern Culture 787/2 In the 1960s Mary R. Haas learned that Mobilian speakers could still be found.
2. † a. In some 19th-cent. usage: = Muskogean adj. Obsolete.
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the world > people > ethnicities > North American peoples > peoples of South-Eastern America > [adjective]
Cherokee1674
Chickasaw1726
Yamasee1741
Natchez1744
Alabama1775
Coushatta1775
Alabaman1818
Santee1833
Mobilian1840
Karankawa1852
Muskogee1891
Opelousa1911
1840 G. Bancroft Hist. U.S. (ed. 2) III. xxii. 253 Of the Mobilian confederacies and tribes,—that is, of the Chickasas, Choctas, and Muskhogees,—fifty thousand.
1851 N. Amer. Rev. Oct. 512 A confederacy was formed against the English which embraced all the tribes of the Algonquin family,..the Wyandots, and some tribes of the Mobilian race.
1889 J. Fiske Let. 3 Aug. (1940) 567 I had never heard of the Mobilian division of Indians and I shall try to find out more about them.
b. Of, relating to, or designating the Mobile of North America. Cf. Mobile adj.2 1.
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1907 F. W. Hodge Handbk. Amer. Indians I. 916/1 The Mobilian tribe..were found on Mobile bay when the French began to plant a colony at that point about the year 1700.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2002; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.adj.1748