Nabataean
adj, name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The ancient inhabitants of Nabataea, a region of Arabia inhabited by the Nabataeans that covers parts of northern Arabia and the Southern Levant, lying between Arabia and Syria, and stretching from the Euphrates river to the Red Sea. During the Hellenistic Period, the Nabataeans were involved in a nexus of trade routes reaching as far as Italy to the west and India to the east, which centered at their city of Petra in what is now Western Jordan near the Negev Desert from before 310 BCE until the Roman conquest in 106 CE.
- 2 Any of a group of people who once lived around modern Jordan. historical
- 1 Relating to the Nabataean people, their kings, art, architecture, religion, language, or script.
"2014, Paul Salopek, Blessed. Cursed. Claimed., National Geographic (December 2014)https://web.archive.org/web/20150212214621/http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/12/pilgrim-roads/salopek-text We tug our hammer-headed mules along the tourist trails of Petra, the fabled Nabataean capital cut from rock the color of living muscle."
- 1 The language of those people.
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"2014, Paul Salopek, Blessed. Cursed. Claimed., National Geographic (December 2014)https://web.archive.org/web/20150212214621/http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/12/pilgrim-roads/salopek-text We tug our hammer-headed mules along the tourist trails of Petra, the fabled Nabataean capital cut from rock the color of living muscle."
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin Nabataeus (“Nabataean”), which was borrowed from Ancient Greek Ναβαταῖος (Nabataîos, “Nabataean”), which was borrowed from Nabataean Aramaic 𐢕𐢃𐢋𐢈 (nbṭw, “Nabataean”). Possibly cognate with Arabic النبطي (an-Nabaṭī, “Nabataean, Nabaṭ”), Arabic أَنْبَاط (ʔanbāṭ), and Hebrew נבטים (nabaṭim, “Nabataeans”), and Hebrew נבטית (nabaṭit, “Nabataean (adj.)”), all of which might be ultimately derived from the same Semitic root, perhaps Proto-Semitic *nabat-, possibly cognate with Akkadian nabāṭu ("to shine brightly").
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.