Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A food prepared by Native Americans from lean dried strips of meat pounded into paste, mixed with fat and berries, and pressed into small cakes.
- noun A food made chiefly from beef, dried fruit, and suet, used as emergency rations.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Originally, a preparation made by the North American Indians, consisting of the lean parts of venison, dried by the sun or wind, and then pounded into a paste, with melted fat, and tightly pressed into cakes, a few service-berries being sometimes added to improve the flavor.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Among the North American Indians, meat cut in thin slices, divested of fat, and dried in the sun.
- noun Meat, without the fat, cut in thin slices, dried in the sun, pounded, then mixed with melted fat and sometimes dried fruit, and compressed into cakes or in bags. It contains much nutriment in small compass, and is of great use in long voyages of exploration.
- noun A treatise of much thought in little compass.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A food made from
meat which has beendried and beaten into apaste , mixed withberries and rendered fat, and shaped into little patties. - noun An emergency ration of meat and fruit.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun lean dried meat pounded fine and mixed with melted fat; used especially by North American Indians
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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In Canada, we had pemmican, which is dried meat and fat mixed together, and buckwheat groats, which is sort of like a barley porridge.
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It is called pemmican, and sells here for twenty-five cents a pound.
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They also brought back pemmican, which is made by chopping buffalo meat very fine, and mixing it with the tallow from the animal.
Stories of American Life and Adventure Edward Eggleston 1869
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Richard Shandon presided over the management of this precious cargo like a man who knows what he is about; all was stowed away, ticketed, and numbered in perfect order; a very large provision of the Indian preparation called pemmican, which contains many nutritive elements in a small volume, was also embarked.
The English at the North Pole Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras Jules Verne 1866
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It is called pemmican, and sells here for twenty-five cents a pound.
Minnesota and Dacotah: in letters descriptive of a tour through the North-west, in the autumn of 1856. With information relative to public lands, Christopher Columbus 1857
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This consisted chiefly of pemmican, which is frozen or dried reindeer-flesh kneaded with the fat into a kind of paste.
Notable Voyagers From Columbus to Nordenskiold William Henry Giles Kingston 1847
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It is now called pemmican, from _pemmi_, meat, and
The Story of Nelson also "The Grateful Indian", "The Boatswain's Son" William Henry Giles Kingston 1847
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The "pemitigon" mentioned here is better known as pemmican, a sort of dried meat, which may be eaten as prepared, or pounded fine and cooked with other articles of food.
First Across the Continent; The Story of The Exploring Expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804-5-6 1805
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From the mighty Saskatchewan had come down that great river for a thousand miles, and then onward for several hundred more, brigades that had, in addition to the furs and robes of that land, large supplies of dried meat and tallow, and many bags of the famous food called pemmican, obtained from the great herds of buffalo that still, in those days, like the cattle on a thousand hills, thundered through the land and grazed on its rich pasturage and drank from its beautiful streams.
Three Boys in the Wild North Land Egerton Ryerson Young 1874
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This kind of pemmican was first produced for the use of the Norwegian Army; it was intended to take the place of the "emergency ration."
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