Phoenician
pronunciation
How to pronounce Phoenician in British English:
UK [fə'ni:ʃn]
How to pronounce Phoenician in American English:
US [fə'niʃn]
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- Noun:
- a member of an ancient Semitic people who dominated trade in the first millennium B.C.
- the extinct language of an ancient Semitic people who dominated trade in the ancient world
Word Origin
- Phoenician (n.)
- late 14c., from Middle French phenicien, from Latin Phoenice, from Greek Phoinike "Phoenicia" (including Carthage), perhaps literally "land of the purple" (i.e., source of purple dye, the earliest use of which was ascribed to the Phoenicians by the Greeks). Identical with phoenix (q.v.), but the relationship is obscure. In reference to a language from 1836; as an adjective from c. 1600.
Example
- 1. He may have had semitic , perhaps phoenician , ancestors .
- 2. The voyage retraced the ancient phoenician trading route with the cornish .
- 3. The name etna is thought-according to adrian room 's book placenames of the world-to have originated from a phoenician word attuna meaning " furnace . "
- 4. He said copper coins with phoenician iconography have also also been discovered in north america .
- 5. Rather than the traditional tour from sumerian cuneiform to the phoenician alphabet to the greeks to the romans to modern french and so on , it 's filled with the detours and great languages of the past , now barely remembered .