Sumerian
Americanadjective
noun
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a native or inhabitant of Sumer.
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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.
noun
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a member of a people who established a civilization in Sumer during the 4th millennium bc
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the extinct language of this people, of no known relationship to any other language
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of Sumerian
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Simon Armitage’s translation of the Sumerian epic highlights the friendship between its two heroes and the terrible grief of mortality.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 24, 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
Like Sumerian, Maya writing used both logograms and phonetic signs.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
