I. |arə|māik adjective
Usage: usually capitalized
Etymology: Greek Arama ios + English -ic
: of, relating to, characteristic of, or composed in Aramaic
II. noun
( -s )
Usage: capitalized
: a Semitic language of which documents are known from as early as the 9th century B.C., orig. the speech of the Aramaeans but later used extensively in southwest Asia as a commercial lingua franca and governmental language and adopted as their customary speech by various non-Aramaean peoples including the Jews among whom it replaced Hebrew after the Babylonian exile, developing into an eastern and a western type, each having various dialects some of which are often regarded as separate languages, but ultimately being largely displaced by Arabic as a consequence of the Muslim conquests, only neo-Syriac of the eastern group and Modern Western Aramaic of the western group being still spoken