Lithuanian

How to spell lithuanian

10 letters · 5 syllables

5 of the 38 people asked to spell lithuanian in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

How to pronounce lithuanian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lithuanian mean?

1. adjectiveBelonging to or relating to Lithuania, its people, or its language.
2. nounA person from Lithuania, or the language spoken there.

Lithuanian in a sentence

• adjective

  The museum displayed a collection of lithuanian folk costumes from the Baltic coast.

• noun

  As a proud lithuanian, he flew the national flag on independence day.

• adjective

  She learned several lithuanian phrases before her trip to Vilnius.

• noun

  The course teaches lithuanian alongside Latvian and Estonian.

Where does lithuanian come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word is built on the country name Lithuania, which appears in Latinised form as Lituania in medieval documents from around the eleventh century, when the name of the people and their land first reached western chroniclers. In their own language the country is Lietuva, and the modern English spelling preserves the older Latin shape with its distinctive 'th' rather than a plain 't'. The ultimate root is genuinely uncertain: one widely cited idea links it to a small river called the Lietava, while other proposals connect it to old words for an open plain or for rain, so scholars cannot settle the matter. English added the familiar suffix -an, the same ending seen in Italian and Romanian, to turn the place name into a word for the people, their language, and anything belonging to the nation. The main spelling trap is that unstressed middle, where the 'thu' and the 'a' sounds blur together and writers are tempted to drop or swap a letter.

How the word is built

• Lithuania (the country, from Latin Lituania)
• -an (adjective/noun suffix indicating origin or belonging)