Word.ws English Dictionary

-arian

-arian suffix: a believer in something.

Suffix (1)

-arian

  1. A believer in something.
  2. An advocate of something.
  3. (uncommon) A native or inhabitant of somewhere.

Suffix (2)

-arian

  1. Used to form an adjective meaning "of or pertaining to" from nouns ending in -arium.
    • aquarium + -arian → aquarian (“of or pertaining to aquariums”)
    • planaria + -arian → planarian (“of or pertaining to planaria”)

Origin of -arian

Back-formation from various words ending in “arian”, some directly derived from Classical or Medieval Latin words ending in -arius by adding -an to the stem, other indirectly via Old French words ending in "arien(ne)" or "erien(ne)" or from English words ending in “ary” to which -an was suffixed; note the same phenomenon in -ary. Equivalent to -ary + -an.

By surface analysis, -ari(um) + -an and -ari(a) + -an.

Words that rhyme with -arian

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about -arian

What does -arian mean?
-arian means a believer in something.
What part of speech is -arian?
-arian is a suffix.

Words near -arian in the dictionary

  1. -arche
  2. -archy
  3. -ard
  4. -aria
  5. -arial
  6. -arian
  7. -aric
  8. -arism
  9. -arist
  10. -arium
  11. -ariums

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -arian (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “-arian.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-arian. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.