TOTEM
What does "TOTEM" mean?
A natural object or animal believed to be a spiritual emblem of a clan, family, or person.
Meanings
- An animal, plant, or natural object adopted as the sacred symbol and ancestral kin of a clan or group. Each clan honored its own totem and would not hunt the animal it represented.
- A revered emblem or symbol that stands for something larger. The old typewriter became a totem of the newspaper's better days. figurative
Did you know?
- 'Totem' comes from the Ojibwe word 'odoodem', 'his clan' - it names kinship, not a carved pole, which the English-speaking world often confuses it with.
- The phrase 'low man on the totem pole' is doubly wrong: totem poles were never ranked top-to-bottom, and they record a family's history, not its pecking order.
Word origin
From Ojibwe 'odoodem', meaning 'his kinship group' or 'his clan', borrowed into English in the late 18th century via fur traders and ethnographers.
Remember it
TOTEM = 'TO TEaM' jumbled: a totem marks who is on your team, your clan, your kin.
A little poem
Cedar holds the raven,
the bear, the man, the salmon-
a family, carved standing.
haiku
Wordplay
- I asked the carver which animal ranked highest on his totem pole. He said none - I'd totem-ally misunderstood the whole thing.
What it teaches
What you choose as your emblem reveals less about the world than about who you claim as kin.
Quick facts
What does TOTEM mean?
A natural object or animal believed to be a spiritual emblem of a clan, family, or person.
Is TOTEM a valid word?
Yes — TOTEM is one of the answer words in Wordul, the daily word game.
How many letters is TOTEM?
TOTEM has 5 letters and 2 syllables.
Where does TOTEM come from?
From Ojibwe 'odoodem', meaning 'his kinship group' or 'his clan', borrowed into English in the late 18th century via fur traders and ethnographers.
What can TOTEM teach us?
What you choose as your emblem reveals less about the world than about who you claim as kin.
How players do
Be the first to solve it.