Word.ws English Dictionary

gentilicial

gentilicial adjective: indicative of the family or lineage.

Adjective

gentilicial (comparative more gentilicial, superlative most gentilicial)

  1. Indicative of the family or lineage.
    • Ingua was the Hereditary Name of the Kings Romans of Peru, and their Gentilicial Arms a Rainbow and Two Snakes;1724, John Guillim, “The Introduction”, in A Display of Heraldry, the sixth edition, London: […] T. W. For R. and J. Bonwicke and R. Wilkin, […]. And J. Walthoe and Tho. Ward, […], page 4
    • It is true, that in point of fact, the difference between these gentilicial names was more apparent than real;1855, “Memoir on two large Medallion Busts which are preserved in the Manuscript Room of the Library of Trinity College, Dublin; as also on two inedited Patmian Inscriptions extracted from the...

Noun

gentilicial (plural gentilicials)

  1. A name or symbol that identifies a family or lineage.
    • But Aurelius is a gentilicial name, like Propertius, and such duplication of gentilicials would be most extraordinary at this period.1977, Lawrence Richardson, Jr., “Introduction”, in Propertius: Elegies, I–IV, Norman, Okla.: the University of Oklahoma Press in cooperation with the American Philological Association, published...
    • However, the letter is more likely to be a gamma, and since both Gillius and Tillius are known gentilicials, the name is probably Gilvius.2007, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, page 157

Synonyms of gentilicial

Forms of gentilicial

Adjective
comparativemore gentilicial
superlativemost gentilicial
Noun
pluralgentilicials

Origin of gentilicial

From Latin gentīlicius + -al.

Questions about gentilicial

What does gentilicial mean?
Gentilicial means indicative of the family or lineage.
What part of speech is gentilicial?
Gentilicial can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near gentilicial in the dictionary

  1. gentilesse
  2. gentilhomme
  3. gentilhommes
  4. gentilic
  5. gentilicia
  6. gentilicial
  7. gentilicials
  8. gentilician
  9. gentilicians
  10. gentilicious
  11. gentilicium

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gentilicial (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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