Sicilian

How to spell sicilian

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce sicilian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sicilian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Sicily, the island off the southern coast of Italy, or to its people, language, or culture.
2. nounA native or inhabitant of Sicily.

Sicilian in a sentence

• adjective

  The restaurant is famous for its sicilian seafood pasta.

• noun

  As a proud sicilian, he visited his family's village every summer.

• adjective

  She studied the sicilian dialect during her year in Palermo.

• noun

  The chef, a sicilian by birth, learned to cook from his grandmother.

Where does sicilian come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is formed from the place name Sicily plus the suffix -ian, which English uses to mean 'belonging to' or 'a native of'. Sicily itself comes from the Latin Sicilia, which the Romans took from the Greek Sikelia, the land of the Sikeloi (in Latin, the Siculi), an ancient people who settled the eastern part of the island. The literal idea behind the name is simply 'the land of the Sicels'. English has used the form Sicilian since at least the 1500s, applying it both to people from the island and to anything associated with it, from cooking to dialect. The spelling trap lives in the single c followed by an i, and the unstressed -ian ending that sounds like 'yun'; writers often want to double a letter or add an extra vowel that is not there.

How the word is built

• Sicil- (from Sicily, Latin Sicilia)
• -ian (adjective/noun suffix meaning 'belonging to' or 'native of')