WAMPUM
wampum, peag, wampumpeag
(noun) small cylindrical beads made from polished shells and fashioned into strings or belts; used by certain Native American peoples as jewelry or currency
boodle, bread, cabbage, clams, dinero, dough, gelt, kale, lettuce, lolly, lucre, loot, moolah, pelf, scratch, shekels, simoleons, sugar, wampum
(noun) informal terms for money
Source: WordNet® 3.1
Etymology
Noun
wampum (countable and uncountable, plural wampums or wampum)
Small beads made from polished shells, especially white ones, formerly used as money and jewelry by certain Native American peoples.
A string of such beads.
(slang) Money.
Synonyms
• (small beads): seawan, peag; porcelain (such objects or strings of them)
Antonyms
• (white shells): suckanhock (black shells)
Source: Wiktionary
Wam"pum, n. Etym: [North American Indian wampum, wompam, from the
Mass. wómpi, Del. wape, white.]
Definition: Beads made of shells, used by the North American Indians as
money, and also wrought into belts, etc., as an ornament.
Round his waist his belt of wampum. Longfellow.
Girded with his wampum braid. Whittier.
Note: These beads were of two kinds, one white, and the other black
or dark purple. The term wampum is properly applied only to the
white; the dark purple ones are called suckanhock. See Seawan. "It
[wampum] consisted of cylindrical pieces of the shells of testaceous
fishes, a quarter of an inch long, and in diameter less than a
pipestem, drilled . . . so as to be strung upon a thread. The beads
of a white color, rated at half the value of the black or violet,
passed each as the equivalent of a farthing in transactions between
the natives and the planters." Palfrey.
Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition