of or relating to Aesculapius or to the art of medicine
Aesculapian in American English
(ˌɛskjuˈleɪpiən)
adjective
1.
of Aesculapius
2.
medical
Aesculapian in American English
(ˌeskjəˈleipiən, esp Brit ˌiskə-)
adjective
1.
pertaining to Aesculapius
2.
medical; medicinal
noun
3.
a physician; doctor
Also: Esculapian
Word origin
[1615–25; aesculapi(us) + -an]This word is first recorded in the period 1615–25. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: deposit, discount, palette, scintillation, swamp-an is a suffix occurring originally in adjectives borrowed from Latin, formed from nounsdenoting places (Roman; urban) or persons (Augustan), and now productively forming English adjectives by extension of the Latin pattern.Attached to geographical names, it denotes provenance or membership (American; Chicagoan), the latter sense now extended to membership in social classes, religious denominations,etc., in adjectives formed from various kinds of noun bases (Episcopalian; pedestrian; Puritan; Republican) and membership in zoological taxa (acanthocephalan; crustacean). Attached to personal names, it has the additional senses “contemporary with” (Elizabethan; Jacobean) or “proponent of” (Hegelian; Freudian) the person specified by the noun base. It also occurs in a set of personal nouns,mainly loanwords from French, denoting one who engages in, practices, or works withthe referent of the base noun (comedian; grammarian; historian; theologian)