seneca village
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.20 in modern English
19
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
2
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
A former village in Manhattan, New York City, New York County, New York State, United States; a settlement of freed slaves and other African Americans, also containing non-WASP European immigrants, demolished to make way for Central Park.
Example Sentences
- "The preacher grandfather had been one of the Seneca Village elders, ministering to the free Negro community downtown."
Etymology
Seneca+village. Unknown. Possibly from Latin Seneca; or from Portuguese Senegal of unknown West African origin; or from Dutch Sennecaas from Algonquian indigenous American term. The Seneca were a native tribe found in the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, which may have been an origin of the name. There had been a tradition of naming African American slaves with Classical names, which may give rise to the term Seneca. The freed slaves may have had a memory of their origin in West Africa and the locale name Senegal.
Origin
- Source language: Latin