chinook1
/tʃɪˈnuːk
/ /tʃɪˈnʊk/ /ʃɪˈnuːk/ /ʃɪˈnʊk/noun
1 (also chinook wind) A warm dry wind which blows down the east side of the Rocky Mountains at the end of winter.In Alberta, Canada, those complaints revolve around chinooks, the warm winds that sweep the area during winter....
- Many named winds: chinook, fohn and the berg wind for example, identify this adiabatic condition.
- A 2000 study published in Neurology found that when warm westerly winds, called the chinook winds, came off the Canadian Rockies, migraines increased in patients.
2 (also chinook salmon) A large North Pacific salmon which is an important food fish.
- Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, family Salmonidae.
- The young snakes prey on recently hatched steelhead trout and chinook salmon and on the tadpoles of yellow-legged frogs.
- The Seymour hatchery raises and releases about 750,000 smolts annually, including pink, chum, coho, chinook salmon, cutthroat trout and steelhead.
Origin
Mid 19th century: from attributive use of Chinook.
Chinook2
/tʃɪˈnuːk/ /tʃɪˈnʊk/ /ʃɪˈnuːk/ /ʃɪˈnʊk/noun (plural same or Chinooks)
1A member of an American Indian people originally inhabiting the region around the Columbia River in Oregon.In the language of the native Chinook, ‘mima ‘does refer to death or burial.’
2 [mass noun] The extinct Penutian language of the Chinook.Apparently not, because another local citizen served as a translator into Chinook, the trade language of the Puget Sound tribes, and an Indian in turn translated into the local tongue....
- Chinook Jargon is a pidgin based primarily on Chinook and Nuuchanulth that served as a trade language throughout the Pacific Northwest.
adjective
Relating to the Chinook or their language.Even Lewis and Clark, returning through the Cascades in 1806, stopped at a nearly deserted Chinook village where they met an old woman ‘badly marked with the Small Pox’, who remained there still.
Origin
From Salish tsinúk.