gentilitial

English

Etymology

From Latin gentīlitius +‎ -al. See gentile.

Adjective

gentilitial (comparative more gentilitial, superlative most gentilitial)

1. (obsolete) specific to a people; national
2. (obsolete) hereditary; entailed on a family
3. Synonym of gentilicial
   • 1955, Massimo Pallottino, The Etruscans, Penguin Books, published 1956, page 184:

     Occasionally – as for example in the paintings of the Tomb of the Inscriptions at Tarquinii – members of the gentilitial class to which the family of the dead man belonged may also be seen dancing.

   • 1965, François Chamoux, The Civilization of Greece, page 312:

     The tribe, as its name (phyle) shows, had an ethnical or gentilitial origin.

   • 2008, Parvaneh Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran, I.B. Tauris & Co., published 2017, →ISBN:

     Now, as Perikhanian observes, and as Khorenats‘i’s tradition confirms, the Is-pahbudhān were probably the original holders of the office of spāhbed, and as a result came to use the title of the office as their gentilitial name.

Synonyms

• gentilitian
• gentilitious

Noun

gentilitial (plural gentilitials)

1. Synonym of gentilicial
   • 1982, H. B. Nicholson, “The Mixteca-Puebla Concept Revisited”, in The Art and Iconography of late Post-Classic Central Mexico: A Conference at Dumbarton Oaks, October 22nd and 23rd, 1977, Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, →ISBN, page 232:

     The easy to remember and pronounce disyllabic gentilitials such as “Aztec,” “Toltec,” “Olmec,” and “Mixtec,” were readily accepted and have become so deeply entrenched that any attempt to replace them with putatively technically more correct terms would seem hopelessly doomed.

   • 1997, Edward Lipiński, Semitic Languages: Outline of a Comparative Grammar (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta), Leuven: Peeters, →ISBN, page 226:

     The suffix -it was most likely added originally to root morphemes ending in -ī (e.g., Palaeosyrian ’à-rí-tum /harītum/, “pregnant”; Hebrew bəkīt, “crying”) and to gentilitials in -iy > ī (§29.41) in order to form their feminine (e.g. Mō’ābīt, “Moabite”) , although a formation with addition of -at > -ā(h) is also attested (e.g. Mō’ăbiyyā).

   • 2001, Auction 21: Bronzes and fractions of Magna Graecia and Sicily Roman and Byzantine Coins‎^[1], Editrice Compositori:

     On the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian (May 1st 305) Maximinus Daia, nephew of the eastern caesar Galerius, became his Caesar and assumed upon himself his uncle’s gentilitials, Galerius Valerius.

   • 2003, Claudio Beretta, The Names of Rivers, Mounts, Sites: Prehistoric linguistic Structures, Ulrico Hoepli Editore S.p.A., →ISBN, page 112:

     Ahout toponyma, the praedial Latin suffix -anus is frequent and recalls the gentilitials of the owners. But also “the suffix of Celtic origin - together with Roman gentilitials - -āko (and -ago as Romance derivative).”

   • 2017, Maria Cecilia D’Ercole, “Economy and trade”, in Alessandro Naso, editor, Etruscology, volume 1, De Gruyter, →ISBN, pages 148–149:

     Finally, the presence of aristocratic tumuli (e.g. in the Monteroni necropolises) together with the existence, already in the Archaic period, of gentilitials associated with the local toponym (Alsaia) suggest that an aristocratic component was directly involved in the dynamics of territorial occupation.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “gentilitial”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)