Scandinavian

How to spell scandinavian

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce scandinavian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does scandinavian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Scandinavia, that is Norway, Sweden and Denmark, or its people, languages and culture.
2. nounA person from Norway, Sweden or Denmark, or a speaker of a Scandinavian language.

Scandinavian in a sentence

• adjective

  The showroom featured clean scandinavian furniture in pale wood.

• noun

  As a scandinavian, he grew up fluent in both Swedish and English.

• adjective

  She enrolled in a scandinavian studies course at the university.

• noun

  Many early settlers in the region were scandinavian by descent.

Where does scandinavian come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built on the place name Scandinavia, which the Romans recorded in a slightly garbled form. The geographer Pliny the Elder wrote of an island he called Scadinavia or Scandia in the far north, and that name almost certainly traces back to a Germanic source meaning roughly 'the island of Skáni', the old name for the Scania region of southern Sweden, joined to a word for island or land. Over the centuries the name came to cover Norway, Sweden and Denmark together, and English added the everyday suffix -an to form the adjective and the noun for a person from there. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: the syllable heard as 'din' is written -din-, and the ending -avian is easy to confuse with -avion or -aven. Remembering the buried place name Scandinavia, with its clear 'navia', helps anchor the awkward vowels.

How the word is built

• Scandinavia (the northern region)
• -an (adjective/noun suffix meaning 'relating to' or 'a person from')