Word.ws English Dictionary

Avernian

Avernian adjective: of or pertaining to Avernus, a lake of Campania, in Italy, famous for its poisonous vapors, which ancient writers fancied were so malignant as to kill birds flying over it. It was represented by the poets to be connected with the infernal regions.

Adjective

Avernian (comparative more Avernian, superlative most Avernian)

  1. Of or pertaining to Avernus, a lake of Campania, in Italy, famous for its poisonous vapors, which ancient writers fancied were so malignant as to kill birds flying over it. It was represented by the poets to be connected with the infernal regions.

Proper noun

the Avernian

  1. A European land mammal age from 29.2 to 23.03 million years ago, a subdivision of the Oligocene.

Forms of Avernian

comparativemore Avernian
superlativemost Avernian

Questions about Avernian

What does Avernian mean?
Avernian means of or pertaining to Avernus, a lake of Campania, in Italy, famous for its poisonous vapors, which ancient writers fancied were so malignant as to kill birds flying over it. It was represented by the poets to be connected with the infernal regions.
What part of speech is Avernian?
Avernian can be an adjective or a proper noun.

Words near Avernian in the dictionary

  1. avermectins
  2. averment
  3. averments
  4. Avernal
  5. Averni
  6. Avernian
  7. Avernus
  8. averos
  9. averot
  10. averoth
  11. averpennies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Avernian (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: “Avernian.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/avernian. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.