: a pole or pillar carved and painted with a series of totemic symbols representing family lineage and often mythical or historical incidents and erected by Indian tribes of the northwest coast of North America
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California has slipped a notch in the bragging-rights totem pole to the world’s fifth-largest economy in the latest update on global business output.—Jonathan Lansner, Oc Register, 16 Oct. 2025 Houston may have been at the bottom of the totem pole at the start of the year, but that reality has already left itself in the past.—Nick Harris, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 6 Oct. 2025 And over the past nine months, a team of judges has been measuring it, pinpointing the exact location of the wave’s base, then stacking images of Slebir’s crouched pose on top of each other like a totem pole up the face of the wave.—Julia Prodis Sulek, Mercury News, 13 Sep. 2025 Job-hopping was once a surefire way of climbing the totem pole to higher salaries and bigger job titles.—Emma Burleigh, Fortune, 11 Sep. 2025 See All Example Sentences for totem pole
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