Bosnian

How to spell bosnian

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce bosnian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bosnian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Bosnia, its people, or its culture.
2. nounA person from Bosnia, or the language spoken there.

Bosnian in a sentence

• adjective

  The restaurant serves traditional bosnian coffee and pastries.

• noun

  A bosnian moved into the flat next door last month.

• adjective

  She studied the bosnian economy for her dissertation.

• noun

  He learned to speak bosnian before his posting abroad.

Where does bosnian come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word is formed from the place name Bosnia plus the suffix -an, which English uses to mean 'belonging to' or 'a person from', as in 'Italian' or 'Canadian'. The country name Bosnia itself is generally traced to the river Bosna that runs through the region, and the river name is thought to descend from an ancient Indo-European root meaning 'running water' or 'current', though the exact source is debated. The territory was recorded in medieval Latin and Greek sources as Bosona, and English picked up the modern form Bosnia along with the derived adjective Bosnian as the area became widely known in English writing during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The spelling trap is small but real: the unstressed middle syllable can tempt writers toward an extra vowel, yet it stays simply 'bos-ni-an', and like other nationality words it always takes a capital letter even though it is stored here in lowercase. Because the root is a single proper name rather than a Latin or Greek word, the form has stayed remarkably stable.

How the word is built

• Bosni- (from Bosnia, the country)
• -an (adjective and noun suffix meaning 'belonging to')