Words I wouldn't have thought were of American Indian origin

Yes, I was taught that the word tuxedo was a vulgarism and that it should be called a dinner jacket.

Thanks.

Netherlands: various balls and dinners involving royalty and/or nobility can have a white tie dress code. But speaking for normal people:
-- student galas tend to be (rented) white tie
-- dissertation defense ceremonies (for the person doing the defense and his assistants)
-- members of a symphony orchestra (for evening concerts)

Black tie: I have no idea. Dutch Wikipedia agrees with me about the above for white tie (listing no other instances), but has nothing on black tie. Very uncommon, I guess.

More here.

Around here black tie events are common. I don't remember ever hearing about white tie events in my area. http://fashion.about.com/cs/glossary/a/partydefinition.htm

Lagniappe? I actually knew the word and use it occasionally. But American Indian is stretching it. Most sources say Spanish la ñapa+ "gift" which may come from Quechua, +yapa, "gift, something added" but that's South America, not American Indian.

Edited by: Jelly Roll Morton

Tuxedo. I, too, have heard that it was considered vulgar..I rummaged around some late 19th c.-early 20th C. etiquette books and did not find any suggestion that you should not say "Tuxedo." But, I did find some more modern statements along the lines of "tuxedo is itself a vulgar slang term for an informal dinner jacket."

It may be more of a genteelism, however. In Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt (1926), Mrs. Babbitt is trying to get her husband to wear a dinner jacket to a party:
>"Now see here, George: I want you to put on your nice dinner-jacket that evening."
>[snip]
>"Everybody knows I can put on as expensive a Tux. as anybody else, and I should worry if I don't happen to have it on sometimes. All a darn nuisance, anyway.
>[snip]
>And oh, Georgie, I do wish you wouldn't say 'Tux.' It's 'dinner-jacket.'"
>"Rats, what's the odds?"
>"Well, it's what all the nice folks say. Suppose Lucile Mc- Kelvey heard you calling it a 'Tux.' "
>"Well, that's all right now! Lucile McKelvey can't pull anything on me! Her folks are common as mud, even if her husband and her dad are millionaires! I suppose you're trying to rub in your exalted social position! Well, let me tell you that your revered paternal ancestor, Henry T., doesn't even call it a 'Tux.'! He calls it a 'bobtail jacket for a ringtail monkey,' and you couldn't get him into one unless you chloroformed him!"

I'm wondering...

How many words of American Indian origin which have entered the English language of the Americas are used outside the USA/Canada/the Americas in everyday Englsh language - ie in England, Australia, South Africa and so on...

Certainly tuxedo is understood outside (of) the Americas, but it is not really an everyday word which you would use in everyday conversation within a non-American English-speaking community (at least, without the American connection).

Interestingly, some languages (such as Hungarian) use the expression smoking for the same thing, and apparently this has nothing to do with English, but to do with how the French used the word, or something like that.

There used to be an article of clothing called a "smoking jacket."
> A smoking jacket is an item of clothing, now relatively rare, specifically designed for the purposes of smoking tobacco, usually in the form of pipes and cigars. While naturally styles vary, the classic smoking jacket is a waist-length jacket usually made of velvet or perhaps silk, with a shawl collar and turn-up cuffs and toggle fastenings. Usually they come in rich colours such as burgundy and bottle green.

A number of languages have adopted "smoking" for "dinner jacket." A Dictionary of European Anglicisms lists something like a dozen languages that use some variant of "smoking" to mean dinner jacket. The author calls "smoking" a "classic example of a false friend."

I'm not having much luck finding how the name of a soft jacket (almost a dressing gown) for lounging around indulging in tobacco got confused with a formal coat.

I learned from Dutch Wikipedia this morning (while looking up the NL uses of black tie, "smoking" in Dutch) that, if I understand it correctly, the two used to go more or less together. A gentleman would appear at dinner wearing a dinner jacket, would join the other men for a smoke after dinner, changing into a smoking jacket (to keep the dinner jacket free from smoke), and then change into a dinner jacket again when rejoining the female company.

Maybe "smoking" in German, Dutch, etc. started to be used for the entire assembly of jackets and paraphernalia, and then for the dinner jacket itself.

As an aside, this Wiki article says a smoking jacket was usually white, which contradicts the rich colors in nutrax's quote.

If you do a Google image search for things like "vintage smoking jacket" or "victorian smoking jacket" or "edwardian smoking jacket," you get those rich colors or brocades or, in black & white photos, at least dark colors. Mark Twain wears a red one; Oscar Wilde's is dark. Beniamino Gigli is in a dark pattern-

Fred Astaire was even buried in a smoking jacket.

Carey Grant used them.

Samuel Pepys tried.

And the Rat Pack did.