alban
UK/ˈalbən/
alban noun: a white crystalline resinous substance extracted from gutta-percha by the action of alcohol or ether.
Noun
alban (uncountable)
- A white crystalline resinous substance extracted from gutta-percha by the action of alcohol or ether.
Proper noun capitalized: Alban
Alban
- A male given name from Latin.
- Act II, Scene I
Forsooth, a blind man at Saint Alban's shrine
Within this half hour hath receiv'd his sight
- Act II, Scene I
- Saint Alban, a Christian martyr executed in Verulamium (St Albans) in the 3rd or 4th century.
- The first Christian martyr in Britain was called Alban.1905, Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall, Our Island Story, page 26
Adjective capitalized: Alban
Alban (not comparable)
- Pertaining to the ancient Latin city of Alba Longa.
- But beside this, there existed at Lavinium another tradition, which inverts the order of things by stating that Lavinium was an Alban colony, founded by six hundred Alban families.1847, Leonhard Schmitz, A History of Rome: From the Earliest Times to the Death of Commodus, A.D. 192, Harper & brothers, page 14
- Now the Alban dynasti bore the name of Silvii or Wood, and it can hardly be without significance that in the vision of the historic glories of Rome revealed to Aeneas in the underworld, Virgil, an antiquary as well as a poet, should represent all the line of Silvii as crowned with oak.1922, Sir James George Frazer, AThe Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Forgotten Books, page 152
- Pertaining to Alba, or the area now covered by Scotland.
- At some point during the Picto-Gaelic fusion, St Andrew was adopted as patron of the Alban kingdom.2011, Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms, Penguin, published 2012, page 66
Forms of alban
| alternative form | albane |
|---|
Origin of alban
Borrowed from French albane (in the form alban, respelt after the German Alban), from the Latin albus (“white”) + the French -ane (“-an”).
From Latin Albānus (“resident of Alba”) (a mountain region and an ancient city of Latium).
Words formed from alban
Questions about alban
- What does alban mean?
- Alban means a white crystalline resinous substance extracted from gutta-percha by the action of alcohol or ether.
- What part of speech is alban?
- Alban can be a noun, a proper noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce alban?
- Alban is pronounced /ˈalbən/ (UK).
Words near alban in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: alban (page history and authors); Alban (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: “alban.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/alban. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.