Libyan

How to spell libyan

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce libyan

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does libyan mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Libya, its people, or its culture.
2. nounA person who comes from or is a citizen of Libya.

Libyan in a sentence

• adjective

  The museum displayed several libyan artefacts from the coastal ruins.

• noun

  As a libyan, she grew up speaking Arabic in Tripoli.

• adjective

  He studied the libyan economy and its reliance on oil exports.

• noun

  Every libyan in the delegation signed the trade agreement.

Where does libyan come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is the adjective and demonym formed from Libya, the name of the North African nation, with the English suffix -an, which means 'belonging to' or 'a native of'. The place name itself reaches far back into antiquity: the ancient Greeks used Libyē as a label for the lands west of the Nile, and indeed for much of the African continent as they knew it, and the Romans carried the name forward in Latin as Libya. The Greeks are thought to have taken it from the name of a Berber people, the Libu, recorded in Egyptian sources as well. When English needed a word for someone or something from the modern country, it simply attached the familiar -an ending, the same one seen in 'American' and 'Italian'. The spelling trap is the unstressed 'y' sitting where an ear might expect an 'i', since the second syllable sounds like a plain 'ee'.

How the word is built

• Liby- (from Libya, the North African country)
• -an (suffix meaning 'belonging to' or 'native of')