Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🏺 Ancient inhabitant 🏺 Ancient Greek-related
Pelasgian

Pelasgian

1 9.9
A person from an ancient people who lived in Greece before the Greeks
  • noun
  • Specialized
: pelásgico

Examples

  • Just as we neutralized Greece during the Crimean and Cold Wars, we need to give the Balkans back to the aboriginal Albanian Pelasgians to prevent Soviet access to the straits.

    Blog text (8)

  • The Pelasgians are thought to have inhabited parts of ancient Greece long before the arrival of the Greeks.

  • Historians believe that the cultural practices of the Pelasgians influenced early Greek civilization.

  • According to some accounts, the Pelasgians worshipped multiple gods and had unique religious ceremonies.

Surface Forms

Pelasgian singular
Pelasgians plural

Morphology

Pelasgian = Pelasgus (opaque) = Pelasg + ian

The demonym is formed with the productive suffix '-ian' but depends on an unfamiliar ethnonym, so learners cannot deduce 'a member of the Pelasgians' from the parts.

Etymology

Pelasgian comes from the ancient Greek name Pelasgoi, which named a group thought to live in Greece before the Greeks. A useful memory is that some link their name to the Greek pelagos 'sea' (seen in English pelagic), so a Pelasgian person can be pictured as an early island or sea people member from before the Greeks.