of or relating to the former E European principality of Moldavia or its inhabitants
noun
3.
a native or inhabitant of Moldavia
Moldavian in American English
(mɑlˈdeiviən, -ˈdeivjən)
adjective
1.
of or pertaining to the former E European principality of Moldavia, its people, or their language
noun
2.
a native or inhabitant of Moldavia
3.
a dialect of Romanian spoken in Moldavia and written in the Cyrillic alphabet
Word origin
[moldavi(a) + -an]-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)