Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Eskimo boots of sealskin or caribou-skin reaching up to the knee or to near the hip.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A mukluk.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Inuktitut

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word kamik.

Examples

  • She always carried the case in her kamik, so it would not be lost.

    The Eskimo Twins 1914

  • She always carried the case in her kamik, so it would not be lost.

    The Eskimo Twins Lucy Fitch Perkins 1901

  • Perforce, he was compelled to thaw it out in the usual way; that is, taking off his kamik and placing his freezing foot under my bearskin shirt, the heat of my body thawing out the frozen member.

    A Negro Explorer at the North Pole Matthew A. Henson 1888

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • "Edna uses the leg skins for kamiks, the sealskin-lined boots that she, Heimo, and the girls wear throughout winter; she boils the hoofs and bones for soup, and uses the leg bones and attached meat for stew. This leaves only the horns, which Heimo often sells to a Fairbanks horn buyer...."

    —James Campbell, The Final Frontiersman (New York and London: Atria Books, 2004), 265

    September 17, 2008

  • "Though the weather was rather chilly and wet, soldiers in fur-lined trapper hats, mittens, and kamiks were loitering in front of the barracks, playing curling or some rather clumsy soccer, with an air of relaxed resignation to the well-known drabness of the soldiering life."

    Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 23

    July 19, 2011