Moccasin
/ˈmɒk.ə.sɪn/noun
A soft leather shoe, traditionally worn by some Indigenous peoples of North America, often with a thin sole.
Did you know?English borrowed *moccasin* from an Algonquian language, and the word entered European records in the 1600s as colonists tried to name a shoe they could see but not truly understand.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Algonquian
PA
*maxkeseni
“shoe or footwear”
Massachusett / Powhatan
Algonquian
makasin
“shoe”
17th Century
English
moccasin
“a Native North American soft shoe”
18th–19th Century
English
mocassin / moccasin
“standardized spelling and wider borrowing into English”
Modern English
English
moccasin
“a soft leather shoe, often with a flexible sole”