Australian

How to spell australian

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce australian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does australian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Australia, its people, or its culture.
2. nounA person who is a native or citizen of Australia.

Australian in a sentence

• adjective

  The australian dollar weakened against the pound last quarter.

• noun

  Every australian on the tour spoke warmly of home.

• adjective

  He developed a taste for australian wine during the trip.

• noun

  As an australian living abroad, she still followed the cricket scores.

Where does australian come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin australis, meaning 'southern', which was itself built on auster, the name of the warm south wind. European geographers of the Renaissance imagined a great unknown landmass in the southern hemisphere and labelled it Terra Australis, literally the 'southern land', long before it was charted. When the continent was finally mapped and settled, the explorer Matthew Flinders championed the short name Australia in the early 1800s, and the adjective and demonym 'australian' followed naturally. The spelling trap lives in that quiet middle: the unstressed 'a' in austr-A-lian and the '-ian' ending are easy to slur or swap. It is worth remembering the buried Latin auster, the south wind, to lock in the 'au' opening and the single 'l'.

How the word is built

• austral- (from Latin australis: southern)
• -ian (adjective/noun suffix: belonging to)