Word.ws English Dictionary

sepian

/ˈsiːpiən/

sepian adjective: of the sepia, i.e. the cuttlefish.

Adjective

sepian (comparative more sepian, superlative most sepian)

  1. (archaic) Of the sepia, i.e. the cuttlefish.
    • He who dived in the swirling Maelstrom saw none to compare with them in horror: tentacular convolutions, tumid bulges, glaring orbs of sepian deformity, would have looked to him innocence beside such incarnations of hatefulness...1895, George MacDonald, Lilith
  2. (dated) Of a dark or inky colour, often in reference to skin pigmentation.
    • Randomly selecting a fruit fly with sepian (dark brown) eyes2010, Mario F. Triola, Elementary Statistics Technology Update, 11th revised edition of Elementary Statistics, published 2012, →ISBN, page 157
  3. (US, dated) Belonging to or pertaining to black Americans or African Americans, who typically have dark pigmentation of the skin.
    • Nineteenth century sepian musicals included Sam T. Jack's "Creoles" -1890...1941, Who is who in Music, Berghan Publishing Company, page 37

Noun

sepian (plural sepians)

  1. (US, capitalized, dated, sometimes) A black American or African American.
    • Chicago Defender columnists forewarned viewers that despite [The World, the Flesh and the Devil's] marketing as the "first interracial romance between male Sepian and non-Sepian female star," the only personal contact between Belafonte and Stevens occurs during the haircut scene and when she takes...2014 [1959], Judith E. Smith, Becoming Belafonte: Black Artist, Public Radical, University of Texas Press, →ISBN, page 187

Synonyms of sepian

Forms of sepian

Adjective
comparativemore sepian
superlativemost sepian
Noun
pluralsepians

Origin of sepian

From sepia + -n.

Questions about sepian

What does sepian mean?
Sepian means of the sepia, i.e. the cuttlefish.
What part of speech is sepian?
Sepian can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce sepian?
Sepian is pronounced /ˈsiːpiən/.

Words near sepian in the dictionary

  1. sepia
  2. sepiaceous
  3. sepiadariid
  4. sepiadariids
  5. sepialike
  6. sepian
  7. sepians
  8. sepiapterin
  9. sepiapterin reductase
  10. sepias
  11. sepic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sepian (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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