Word origin
[1770–80; earlier
Athapasca(
s), introduced as a term for the Canadian Athabaskans (‹ Woods Cree
ahδapaska⋅w Lake Athabaska, lit., there are reeds here and there ‹ Proto-Algonquian *
aɂlap(
y)- net, reticulated + *
-ašk- plant + derivational elements) +
-an]This word is first recorded in the period 1770–80. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: colonial, crescendo, jungle, lotto, red flag-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)