Where does the word "tuxedo" come from?

The name of the most formal jacket most men will ever wear comes from an Indigenous word, by way of a gated millionaires' retreat.

Tuxedo Park is a Hudson Valley enclave that became a retreat for New York's social elite. Pierre Lorillard IV turned the land into a private hunting and fishing reserve in 1885. He organized the Tuxedo Club, and its clubhouse was built in 1886. Etymonline calls the place a "pretentious rural resort" for wealthy New Yorkers.

The jacket itself came from England. The earliest record of a tailless coat worn with evening dress is an 1865 order from the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, to the Savile Row firm Henry Poole & Co. It was a midnight-blue silk smoking jacket with matching trousers. The British still call the descendant of that garment a dinner jacket.

How it reached the resort is less clear. Society columns reported that Griswold Lorillard and his friends arrived at the club's first Autumn Ball, in October 1886, in "a tailless dress coat." Another account credits James Brown Potter, a banker who had worked in London, with bringing the style over after meeting the Prince. Wikipedia notes that the Potter claim cannot be checked against independent sources.

The word "tuxedo" for the jacket is recorded from 1889. Etymonline notes some confusion at first. People assumed the "Tuxedo coat" was meant to replace the swallow-tail coat of full evening dress. Once it was understood as something less formal, society accepted it. The short form "tux" followed by 1922.

The place name is older than any of this. Etymonline, citing the place-name scholar Bright, traces it to Munsee Delaware p'tuck-sepo, "crooked river." Other readings exist. Wikipedia's article on the village gives Munsee ptukwsit, "round foot" or the Wolf Clan, alongside "crooked river." Etymonline treats older guesses built on words for "bear" or "wolf" as less reliable.

Many other languages skipped the resort entirely. In much of Europe the same outfit is called a smoking, a pseudo-English name taken from the smoking jacket it grew out of.