Delaware
Americannoun
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Delawares,
plural
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Delaware
plural
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Baron. De La Warr, 12th Baron.
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a state in the eastern United States, on the Atlantic coast. 2,057 square miles (5,330 square kilometers). Dover. DE (for use with zip code), Del.
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a city in central Ohio.
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a river flowing south from southeastern New York, along the boundary between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, into the Delaware Bay. 296 miles (475 kilometers) long.
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a member of a grouping of North American Indian peoples, comprising the Munsee, Unami, and Unalachtigo, formerly occupying the drainage basin of the Delaware River, the lower Hudson River valley, and the intervening area.
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the Eastern Algonquian language of any of the Delaware peoples.
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Horticulture.
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a red vinifera grape grown for table use that yields a white wine.
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the vine bearing this fruit.
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noun
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a member of a North American Indian people formerly living near the Delaware River
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the language of this people, belonging to the Algonquian family
noun
noun
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Abbreviation: Del.. DE. a state of the northeastern US, on the Delmarva Peninsula: mostly flat and low-lying, with hills in the extreme north and cypress swamps in the extreme south. Capital: Dover. Pop: 817 491 (2003 est). Area: 5004 sq km (1932 sq miles)
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a river in the northeastern US, rising in the Catskill Mountains and flowing south into Delaware Bay , an inlet of the Atlantic. Length 660 km (410 miles)
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One of the thirteen colonies.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of Delaware
First recorded in 1720–30 in reference to the American Indian peoples
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Newsom filed the lawsuit in Delaware, where Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., are incorporated.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2026
Last month, his companies became the focus of two federal inquiries and a Delaware insurance regulatory review.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2026
Four states — California, Delaware, Colorado and Hawaii — are now mandating that students take a semester-long personal-finance course before graduating.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 4, 2026
Walter’s Delaware Life had 8.6% of its overall investments in short-term loans at the end of 2025.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 30, 2026
After a brief melee caused by a hard foul, Josh’s twin, Jordan, led the team, like GW crossing the Delaware, to victory, and to their second straight playoff appearance.
From "The Crossover" by Kwame Alexander
But leaders of the Shawnee Tribe and the Eastern Shawnees, both now based in Oklahoma, like the Delawares, said they hadn’t had any discussions about it.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 11, 2024
The framers from the big states, like Virginia’s James Madison, fought the idea furiously, but in the end, the Vermonts and Delawares had their way.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 18, 2020
Early inhabitants had been Shawnees, Miamis, Wyandots, and numerous smaller tribes, but retreating bands of Delawares and others had joined them from the East.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018
Imagine carving out of an expanse as large as 1.5 Delawares — a mound as tall, from base to peak, as Mount McKinley in Alaska, the tallest mountain in North America at 20,237 feet.
From New York Times ● Dec. 8, 2014
Interactions with Moravian Protestant missionaries had shown the Delawares that Moravian ways of religion were similar to their own, including the ideal of pacifism.
From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
