Estonian

American  

[e-stoh-nee-uhn] / ɛˈstoʊ ni ən /

Also Esthonian

adjective

1. of or relating to Estonia or its people.

---

noun

1. a member of a Finnish people inhabiting Estonia, Livonia, and other districts of Russia.

2. the Uralic language of Estonia, very closely related to Finnish.

Estonian British  

/ ɛˈstəʊnɪən, ɛˈsθəʊ-, ɛˈstəʊnɪən /

adjective

1. of, relating to, or characteristic of Estonia, its people, or their language

---

noun

1. the official language of Estonia: belongs to the Finno-Ugric family

2. a native or inhabitant of Estonia

Etymology

Origin of Estonian

First recorded in 1785–95; Estoni(a) + -an

Example Sentences

On Tuesday, Estonian officials said a Nato fighter jet had shot down a suspected Ukrainian drone.

From BBC • May 20, 2026

Embassy in Tallinn calling the purchase “one of the most significant capability upgrades in Estonian military history.”

From Slate • Apr. 24, 2026

I watched as a drone zoomed in low through the Estonian woods.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 7, 2026

Kusti Salm, the chief executive of Estonian startup Frankenburg Technologies, which is also developing cost-effective interceptors, remembers first reading about Iran sending Shaheds to Ukraine in 2022.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 30, 2026

Properly called the Öpik–Oort cloud, it is named for the Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik, who hypothesized its existence in 1932, and for the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, who refined the calculations eighteen years later.

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson