[uh
n; when stressed an] 
| the form of a before an initial vowel sound (an arch; an honor) and sometimes, esp. in British English, before an initial unstressed syllable beginning with a silent or weakly pronounced h: an historian. |
[ahn] | the Sumerian god of heaven: the counterpart of the Akkadian Anu. |
| a suffix occurring originally in adjectives borrowed from Latin, formed from nouns denoting places (Roman; urban) or persons (Augustan), and now productively forming English adjectives by extension of the Latin pattern. Attached to geographic names, it denotes provenance or membership (American; Chicagoan; Tibetan), 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. The suffix -an, and its variant -ian also occurs in a set of personal nouns, mainly loanwords from French, denoting one who engages in, practices, or works with the referent of the base noun (comedian; grammarian; historian; theologian); this usage is esp. productive with nouns ending in -ic (electrician; logician; technician). See -ian for relative distribution with that suffix. |
| actinon. |
| in the year. |
| 1. | Anglo-Norman. |
| 2. | Associate in Nursing. |
| an 1 (ən; ān when stressed) indef.art. The form of a used before words beginning with a vowel or with an unpronounced h: an elephant; an hour. See Usage Notes at a2, every. [Middle English, from Old English ān, one; see oi-no- in Indo-European roots.] Word History: The forms of the indefinite article are good examples of what can happen to a word when it becomes habitually pronounced without stress. An is in fact a weakened form of one; both an and one come from Old English ān "one." In early Middle English, besides representing the cardinal numeral "one," ān developed the special function of indefinite article, and in this role the word was ordinarily pronounced with very little or no stress. Sound changes that affected unstressed syllables elsewhere in the language affected it also. First, the vowel was shortened and eventually reduced to a schwa (ə). Second, the n was lost before consonants. This loss of n affected some other words as well; it explains why English has both my and mine, thy and thine. Originally these were doublets just like a and an, with mine and thine occurring only before vowels, as in Ben Jonson's famous line "Drink to me only with thine eyes." By the time of Modern English, though, my and thy had replaced mine and thine when used before nouns (that is, when not used predicatively, as in This book is mine), just as some varieties of Modern English use a even before vowels (a apple). |
| an 2 also an' (ən, ān when stressed) conj. Archaic And if; if. [Middle English, short for and, and, from Old English; see and.] |
| AN abbr. airman, Navy |
an- pref.
Variant of a-.
ana- pref.
Upward; up: anacrotic.
Backward; back: anaplasia.
Again; anew: anabiosis.
an networking
The country code for the Netherlands Antilles (Dutch Antilles).
(1999-01-27)
AN
|
