This list was used by members of the Fifth Thule Expedition (between the years of 1921 to 1924) to collect words from three dialects spoken by the indigenous people living in «Arctic America» (northern Canada). The author notes that a linguistic survey was not the main focus of the expedition, but that a basic linguistic study still was to be attempted, given the «extremely slight material otherwise available from the Central Eskimos». Although the author states that the list has 500 items, it actually has 510 items in total when expanding all alternative glosses in the list and by including the numerals in the total count.