Ethiopian

How to spell ethiopian

9 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce ethiopian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ethiopian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Ethiopia, its people, or its culture.
2. nounA person from Ethiopia or of Ethiopian descent.

Ethiopian in a sentence

• adjective

  The restaurant serves traditional ethiopian coffee after every meal.

• noun

  The marathon was won by an ethiopian who set a course record.

• adjective

  She studied the rich history of the ethiopian highlands at university.

• noun

  As a proud ethiopian, he often cooked the dishes of his homeland for friends.

Where does ethiopian come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the ancient Greek name Aithiops, which the Greeks applied to peoples living south of Egypt. The name was built from aithein, meaning 'to burn' or 'to scorch', and ops, meaning 'face', so it literally described people with sun-darkened faces. The Greek place name Aithiopia passed into Latin as Aethiopia and entered English by way of Latin and French, where the older spelling 'Aethiopian' kept the classical 'ae'. Over time English dropped that opening 'a' and settled on the cleaner modern spelling 'Ethiopian', though the country's own name for itself comes from a different tradition entirely. The chief spelling trap today is the unstressed middle vowel, since 'Ethi-O-pian' is easy to mishear and the 'i' before '-an' can vanish in careless writing.

How the word is built

• Ethiopia (place name, from Greek Aithiops: burnt-face)
• -an (suffix forming adjectives and nouns of origin)