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Serbian

Serbian

11 2.9
A person born in Serbia or who has citizenship there
  • proper noun
  • /ˈsɜrbiən/
translation icon : serbio
  • Half a million Serbians reside in the US, Marvin.
  • Serbians and Croatians
  • Serbians and Muslims
  • Orthodox Serbians

They might be killing each other, but here, OK, here, you know, I never thought I'd have a, you know, a Serbian friend.

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Examples

  • The average Albanian, Serbian, Croat, Bosnian, Montenegrin, the average person just wants to move on with their life.

  • Do you speak Serbian?

  • And there's this a Serbian man that that runs the that owns the restaurant.

  • Problem was I sold it to a Serbian named Milos for $50,000.

  • Petar's books have been published in Croatian, English, and Serbian.

    Academic text (2017)
  • Half a million Serbians reside in the U.S., Marvin.

    Fiction book (1996)
  • Not all Croatians or Serbians were, or are, die-hard nationalists.

    Academic text (1997)
  • A region of historical importance to Serbians, Kosovo is now home to 1.6 million Muslim Albanians (nearly 90 percent of its total population).

    Academic text (1993)
  • In his late fifties, the thickly moustached Luci doesn't flinch—as younger generations do—from speaking Serbian.

    Academic text (2007)
  • Do you speak Serbian?

Synonyms

Serb
vsSerbian
10 3.8

A person whose family comes from Serbia or nearby countries

focuses on citizenship or legal nationality rather than ethnic descent
Servian
vsSerbian
  • Archaic
8.0

A person from Serbia or whose family comes from Serbia

emphasizes legal nationality or current citizenship rather than ancestry

Surface Forms

Serbian main

Morphology

Serbian = Serb (transparent) = Serb + ian

Proper-name/demonym formation with '-ian' is productive and directly signals nationality or origin.

Etymology

Serbian comes from the people name Serb plus the ending -ian, which means 'from' or 'relating to', like Russian or Brazilian. So a Serbian is a person from Serbia or of Serbian nationality.