an

a prefix occurring before stems beginning with a vowel or h in loanwords from Greek, where it means “not,” “without,” “lacking” ( anarchy; anecdote ); used in the formation of compound words:

Informal. and.

Archaic. if.

variant of ad- before n: announce.

variant of ana- before a vowel:

the Sumerian god of heaven: the counterpart of the Akkadian Anu.

actinon.

Anglo-Norman.

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 especially productive with nouns ending in -ic ( electrician; logician; technician ). See -ian for relative distribution with that suffix.

in the year.

Anglo-Norman.

Associate in Nursing.