[1860–65; ‹ L api(s) bee + -an; cf. L apiānus muscat]This word is first recorded in the period 1860–65. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: big brother, blind spot, calibrate, mutualism, prep-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)
Examples of 'apian' in a sentence
apian
But before anyone heads to the nearest hive, bewarned-scientific tests show that apian venom is not the bees' knees.
Times, Sunday Times (2010)
Far better, then, to plant apian-friendly flowers that will act as service stations for those bees that are already here.