-ian +
(Latin: suffix form of -an from -ianus, a modifier of the main word to which it is attached: belonging to, coming from, being involved in, or being like something )
Appearing in such words as comedian, egalitarian, Bostonian, Italian, Smithsonian, mathematician, Alabamian, Californian, Arizonian, and Canadian. It is attached to the root of common or proper nouns with the meanings "of, pertaining to, from", or "like" the proper name appearing in the stem.
—Based on information from The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology,
Edited by Robert K. Barnhart, The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.
abecedarian
1. Of or pertaining to the alphabet; marked with the alphabet; arranged in alphabetical order, as abecedarian psalms, like the 119th.
2. Occupied with learning the alphabet, or pertaining to one so occupied.
3. One engaged in teaching the alphabet and the merest rudiments of instruction.
academician
A member of an academy or society concerned with the arts or sciences.
acanthopterygian
Any of a large group of fishes with bony skeletons and hard, spiny rays in the dorsal and anal fins; including the sunfish, perch, bass, porgy, mackeral, and swordfish.
acararian
Pertaining to, caused by, or of the nature of an acarus or mite.
acoustician
1. A specialist in acoustics.
2. Someone who fits hard-of-hearing people with hearing aids.
aeolian, eolian
Pertaining to the action or effect of the wind.
agrarian, agrarians
1. In Roman history, relating to the land: epithet of a law (Lex agraria) for the division of conquered lands.
2. Relating to, or connected with, landed property.
3. Of, relating to, or connected with, cultivated land, or its cultivation.
4. In botany, growing wild in the fields; also, name proposed for the lowest of the altitudinal zones of vegetation, within the limits of the cultivation of corn.
agrestian
1. Belonging to the country, rustic, rude.
2. A rustic, a countryman.
altitudinarian
1. Pertaining to, or reaching to, the heights (of fancy, doctrine, etc.).
2. One who is given to lofty thoughts or plans.
amphibian
A cold-blooded vertebrate that spends some time on land but must breed and develop into an adult in water. Frogs, salamanders, and toads are amphibians.
antediluvian
1. Of or relating to the period before the Biblical flood: "Antediluvian man."
2. Any of the early patriarchs who lived prior to the Deluge.
3. So extremely old as seeming to belong to an earlier period:
"A ramshackle antediluvian tenement."
"Antediluvian ideas."
"Archaic laws."
4. A very old (or old fashioned) person.
5. Coined by English physician Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682).
antemeridian, antemeridiem (A.M.)
1. Of or belonging to the forenoon or "morning".
2. Before midday; applicable to the hours between midnight and the following noon.
antiquarian
Of or connected with the study of antiquities.
aphidian
A reference to an aphid.
aphrodisian
Pertaining to Aphrodite or Venus.
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