a. and sb. [f. L. Anglī (see ANGLE sb.3) + -AN.] Of or pertaining to the Angles. Often in combination, as East Anglian, of East Anglia or the East Angles, the Teutonic occupants of Norfolk and Suffolk; also used in reference to the same district in modern times.
The OE. adj. f. Engle was Englisc, now English, but as this was in course of time used of all the Teutonic occupants of Britain (and afterwards extended also to Danish, Norman-French and other immigrants), Anglian is conveniently used by modern writers to translate Englisc, in its early restricted sense, as distinct from Saxon.
1726. Tindal, Rapin’s Hist. Eng. (1757), I. 192. Both the East-Anglian kings being slain.
1871. Earle, Philol. Eng. Tong., § 23. That the whole Anglian vernacular literature should have perished.
1875. Sweet, in Philol. Soc. Trans., 561. There seem to have been three dialects, Anglian, Kentish, and Saxon.
1875. Bibliogr. List of Eng. Dial., 50. On the principal characteristics of East Anglian pronunciation.
