Word.ws English Dictionary

plinian

plinian adjective: descriptive of a style of volcanic eruption similar in character and in intensity to that of the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius witnessed by Pliny the Younger.

Adjective (1)

plinian (not comparable)

  1. Descriptive of a style of volcanic eruption similar in character and in intensity to that of the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius witnessed by Pliny the Younger.
    • The earliest activity of Monte Vulture, central Italy, included ignimbrites but the bulk of the volcano was built up by plinian airfall deposits.1988 July, J. E. Guest, A. M. Duncan, D. K. Chester, “Monte Vulture Volcano (Basilicata, Italy): an analysis of morphology and volcaniclastic facies”, in Bulletin of Volcanology, volume 50, number 4...

Adjective (2) capitalized: Plinian

Plinian (not comparable)

  1. Of or pertaining to Pliny the Younger or Pliny the Elder.

Origin of plinian

From Pliny + -an.

Words formed from plinian

Phrases with plinian

Questions about plinian

What does plinian mean?
Plinian means descriptive of a style of volcanic eruption similar in character and in intensity to that of the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius witnessed by Pliny the Younger.
What part of speech is plinian?
Plinian is an adjective.

Words near plinian in the dictionary

  1. plinged
  2. plinger
  3. plingers
  4. plinging
  5. plings
  6. plinian
  7. Plinian eruption
  8. Plinian eruptions
  9. Plinies
  10. Plinius
  11. plink

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: plinian (page history and authors); Plinian (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: “plinian.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/plinian. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.