A tepee is a tent shaped like a cone: long poles leaning together at the top, with a cover of animal skin or cloth wrapped around them, and a hole at the peak to let smoke from the cooking fire escape. It was the home of Plains peoples in North America — the Lakota, Cheyenne and others — who followed the buffalo and needed a house that could be taken down, carried, and put up again in a new place. That is the key idea: it is not a rough shelter, it is a real home built to move. Today you meet the word in three ways. In history and in writing about Native American life, it means the real thing. In shops it means a small play tent for children, the same shape, sold for a bedroom corner. And people sometimes use it loosely for anything made by leaning sticks together in that cone shape — a garden frame for beans, or wood set up for a campfire. The spelling moves around: **tepee**, **teepee** and **tipi** are all used, and **tipi** is the one preferred by people writing carefully about Native American culture. Say it TEE-pee.

圓錐形帳篷、印第安帳篷（北美原住民的那種）。現在賣給小孩玩的室內小帳篷在台灣也常直接叫「印地安帳篷」。