Palestinian

How to spell palestinian

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce palestinian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does palestinian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Palestine, its people, or its culture.
2. nounA person from Palestine or of Palestinian descent.

Palestinian in a sentence

• adjective

  The museum displayed traditional palestinian embroidery and pottery.

• noun

  The conference invited a young palestinian to speak about local history.

• adjective

  She wrote her thesis on palestinian cuisine and its regional ingredients.

• noun

  As a palestinian, he held dual citizenship and travelled often between countries.

Where does palestinian come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is built on the place name Palestine, which travelled into English through Latin Palaestina and ultimately from the Greek Palaistine. The Greeks in turn borrowed it from a Semitic root preserved in Hebrew as Peleshet, the name for the land of the Philistines, a people who settled the coastal strip in antiquity. Over centuries the term widened from that narrow coastal sense to label the broader region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and the Romans cemented the form 'Palaestina' as an administrative name. The modern adjective and noun 'Palestinian', meaning a person from or relating to Palestine, was formed in English by adding the familiar Latin-derived suffix -ian. The chief spelling traps are the single letter L (not a double), the soft -stin- middle that sounds like 'stin', and the -ian ending rather than -ion.

How the word is built

• Palestin- (from Palestine, the historic region)
• -ian (adjective/noun suffix meaning 'of or belonging to')