Siberian

How to spell siberian

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce siberian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does siberian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Siberia, the vast cold region of northern Asia, or to its climate, people, or wildlife.
2. nounA person who lives in or comes from Siberia.

Siberian in a sentence

• adjective

  The explorers endured a brutal siberian winter with temperatures far below freezing.

• noun

  As a lifelong siberian, she was used to driving on ice for half the year.

• adjective

  The zoo announced the birth of a siberian tiger cub.

• noun

  The documentary followed a siberian whose family had herded reindeer for generations.

Where does siberian come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word is formed from the place name Siberia plus the suffix -ian, which English borrowed through Latin and French to mean 'belonging to' or 'characteristic of'. Siberia itself comes from the Russian Sibir, the name of the enormous, cold region stretching across northern Asia; the origin of Sibir is debated, but it is often linked to a Tatar word meaning 'sleeping land' or to the name of a medieval town and khanate east of the Ural Mountains. The region entered Western awareness as Russia expanded eastward from the late 1500s, and the adjective began appearing in English in the 1700s to describe the climate, geography, and people of that territory. Because the name is foreign and the suffix is so familiar, the chief spelling difficulty is simply remembering the unstressed middle vowel, the '-er-' that is easy to swallow in speech. The same -ian pattern appears in countless demonyms such as Canadian and Brazilian, which makes the ending intuitive once the root is fixed in memory.

How the word is built

• Siber- (from Siberia, the place name)
• -ian (adjective/noun suffix meaning 'belonging to')