Ephesian

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A person born in or living in the ancient Greek city of Ephesus ; of or relating to that ancient city and its people
2. Someone from the ancient city of Ephesus on the western coast of Asia Minor ; belonging to or characteristic of that city and its inhabitants
3. A resident of the old Greek port of Ephesus ; describing anything connected with that ancient city or the community that lived there

Etymology: The name of this word is inseparable from one of the most famous letters in the New Testament. Ephesus was a major Greek city on the coast of western Anatolia, in what is now Turkey, and the Apostle Paul's letter to its Christian community gave the adjective its enduring place in English. Paul's epistle is titled "To the Ephesians," and the Latin form "Ephesii" carried that name into English translations and church usage. The word itself is a simple formation: "Ephesus" plus the English suffix "-ian," which attaches to place names to mark a person from or a thing connected with that place, as in "Athenian" or "Parisian." The suffix reaches English through Old French, and its ultimate ancestry runs back through Latin "-ānus" and "-iānus" to much older Indo-European endings. Those deeper roots matter less than the everyday function: the suffix simply turns a city's name into a label for its people and their things.