urbane

Etymology

A variant of urban plus -ane (a variant of -an, the suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ that forms adjectives). Urban itself is borrowed from Middle French urbain (“belonging to a city, urban; courteous, refined, urbane”; modern French urbain), or from its source, Latin urbānus (“of or belonging to a city, urban; of manners or style: like those of city dwellers: cultivated, polished, refined, sophisticated”), from urbs (“city; walled town; Rome”) (further origin uncertain, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *gʰerdʰ- (“to encircle, enclose; a belt; an enclosure, fence”) or *werbʰ- (“to enclose”)), plus -ānus (the suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ that forms adjectives). Compare typologically civil and courteous.