Sumerian

American  

[soo-meer-ee-uhn, -mer-] / suˈmɪər i ən, -ˈmɛr- /

adjective

1. of or relating to Sumer, its people, or their language.

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noun

1. a native or inhabitant of Sumer.

2. a language of unknown affinities that was the language of the Sumerians and had, in the late 4th and 3rd millenniums b.c., a well-developed literature that is preserved in pictographic and cuneiform writing and represents the world's oldest extant written documents.

Sumerian British  

/ suːˈmɪərɪən, -ˈmɛər- /

noun

1. a member of a people who established a civilization in Sumer during the 4th millennium _bc

2. the extinct language of this people, of no known relationship to any other language

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adjective

1. of or relating to ancient Sumer, its inhabitants, or their language or civilization

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• pre-Sumerian
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of Sumerian

First recorded in 1870–75; Sumer + -ian

Example Sentences

Made of 15-karat gold, this helmet is believed to have been worn by an early Sumerian ruler.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 16, 2026

The loss of tidal waters may have forced Sumerian communities to respond with large-scale irrigation and flood control systems -- innovations that defined Sumer's golden age.

From Science Daily • Oct. 27, 2025

Theories have linked it to early Brahmi scripts, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages, Sumerian, and even claimed it's just made up of political or religious symbols.

From BBC • Jan. 16, 2025

Gleick traces the history of conflicts to the first known war over water nearly 4,500 years ago between the ancient Sumerian city-states of Lagash and Umma in what is now southern Iraq.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 28, 2023

About 90 percent of the tablets in the earliest known Sumerian archives, from the city of Uruk, are clerical records of goods paid in, workers given rations, and agricultural products distributed.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond