Ionian

American  

[ahy-oh-nee-uhn] / aɪˈoʊ ni ən /

adjective

1. of or relating to Ionia.

2. of or relating to the branch of the Greek people named from Ion, their legendary founder.

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noun

1. a member of one of the four main divisions of the prehistoric Greeks who invaded the Greek mainland and, after the Dorian invasions, emigrated to the Aegean islands and the coast of Asia Minor.

2. an Ionian Greek.

Etymology

Origin of Ionian

First recorded in 1555–65; Ioni(a) + -an

Example Sentences

The storm began over the Ionian Sea and damaged a few other countries on its way to Libya, including Bulgaria and Turkey.

From Salon • Sep. 15, 2023

A satellite image broadcast on state television showed that smoke from the Evros fires had drifted across the country to the Ionian islands in the northwest, not far from Italy.

From Reuters • Aug. 22, 2023

According to a European Commission report published this year, in a world that reached four degrees Celsius of warming, tourism would drop by nine percent in the Greek Ionian Islands.

From New York Times • Jul. 26, 2023

Corfu - sits in the Ionian sea off the northwest of Greece - is a destination popular with tourists, with hundreds of thousands Brits visiting every year.

From BBC • Jul. 23, 2023

In time, the Ionian influence and the experimental method spread to the mainland of Greece, to Italy, to Sicily.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan