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Karelian

adjective, noun

Karelian is an adjective meaning “Of, from or relating to the region of Karelia, politically split between the administrative regions of North Karelia and South Karelia, Finland and…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled K-A-R-E-L-I-A-N and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 13 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does Karelian mean?

adjective

  1. 1

    Of, from or relating to the region of Karelia, politically split between the administrative regions of North Karelia and South Karelia, Finland and the Republic of Karelia, Russia.

noun

  1. 1

    A native or inhabitant of the region of Karelia.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce Karelian?

Karelian has 4 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-Karelian.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of Karelian

  • Karelians plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is Karelian?

Karelian appears about once in every 13 million words in written English, the 107,757th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Karelian in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchcarélien (of, from, or pertaining to Karelia), Carélien, Carélienne (Karelian person)
Germankarelisch (of, from, or pertaining to Karelia), Karelier, Karelierin (Karelian person)
Portuguesecarélio, careliano (of, from, or pertaining to Karelia), carélia, careliana (Karelian person)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does Karelian come from?

From Karelia + -an.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).