totem pole
noun
Simple meaning
A Native American sculpture found in the Pacific Northwest, made by carving trees, and usually displaying symbolic figures that represent clan lineage, cultural beliefs.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
tohtuhmpohlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈtoʊtəmˈpoʊl
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
sculpture
A Native American sculpture found in the Pacific Northwest, made by carving trees, and usually displaying symbolic figures that represent clan lineage, cultural beliefs, or historical events.
figurative
A hierarchy or ranking of importance.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (sculpture) A Native American sculpture found in the Pacific Northwest, made by carving trees, and usually displaying symbolic figures that represent clan lineage, cultural beliefs, or historical events.
Used this way, totem pole is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in historical writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Historical writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.