Did You Know?

Adjective

The history of abecedarian is as simple as ABC-literally. The term's Late Latin ancestor, abecedarius (which meant "of the alphabet"), was created as a combination of the letters A, B, C, and D, plus the adjective suffix -arius; you can hear the echo of that origin in the pronunciation of the English term (think "ABC-darian"). In its oldest documented English uses in the early 1600s, abecedarian was a noun meaning "one learning the rudiments of something"; it specifically referred to someone who was learning the alphabet. The adjective began appearing in English texts around 1665.