Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or characteristic of Oxford or Oxford University.
  • noun A native or inhabitant of Oxford.
  • noun A person who studies or has studied at Oxford University.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of or pertaining to Oxford.
  • noun A native or an inhabitant of Oxford: a member or a graduate of the University of Oxford.
  • noun An Oxonian button-over.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • proper noun A student or graduate of Oxford University, in England.
  • adjective Of or relating to the city or the university of Oxford, England.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to Oxford.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or pertaining to or characteristic of Oxford University
  • adjective of or pertaining to or characteristic of the city of Oxford, England, or its inhabitants
  • noun a native or resident of Oxford

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Medieval Latin Oxōnia, Oxford, from Old English Oxnaford : oxena, genitive pl. of oxa, ox + ford, ford; see ford.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Medieval Latin Oxonia +‎ -ian

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Examples

  • Our Oxonian was a young man about the middle height, and naturally of a thoughtful expression and rather reserved mien.

    Coningsby Benjamin Disraeli 1842

  • "In English, an 'Oxonian' means somebody who went to Oxford University," huffed Guy Spier, president of the Oxford Alumni Association of New York.

    Things We Wish We'd Never Heard 2005

  • "In English, an 'Oxonian' means somebody who went to Oxford University," huffed Guy Spier, president of the Oxford Alumni Association of New York.

    Things We Wish We'd Never Heard 2005

  • 'Mr. Thornton, we were accusing Mr. Bell this morning of a kind of Oxonian mediaeval bigotry against his native town; and we -- Margaret, I believe -- suggested that it would do him good to associate a little with Milton manufacturers.'

    North and South Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell 1837

  • “The funny mistress of five or six accents,” Jane regaled them all with the story of her dinner party, successively taking the part of a lecherous old Oxonian who was trying to pinch her bottom, a drunk Ceylonese official, and a dry old colonial widow with a lorgnette.

    A Covert Affair Jennet Conant 2011

  • “The funny mistress of five or six accents,” Jane regaled them all with the story of her dinner party, successively taking the part of a lecherous old Oxonian who was trying to pinch her bottom, a drunk Ceylonese official, and a dry old colonial widow with a lorgnette.

    A Covert Affair Jennet Conant 2011

  • If the saturnine Hicks was Murdoch's "dark angel" at university, her other major correspondent in these years, Frank Thompson, was very much her Oxonian fair-haired boy, whose death while fighting behind enemy lines in the Balkans in 1944 cast him retrospectively not only as her Knight Errant but as the love of her life.

    The Good Apprentice Martin Rubin 2011

  • In late-1970s London, when the young Oxonian was writing for a lefty publication, the New Statesman, he became a fixture in Bloomsbury at the "Friday Lunch," a boozy gathering of scribes.

    An easy label for Christopher Hitchens? Careful, it could be a fighting word 2010

  • In that rich Oxonian voice, he asked, "With whom should one negotiate, if not one's enemies?"

    Election Central Sunday Roundup 2009

  • It seemed to me to be a very Oxonian sort of greeting, and I wondered then if John Hood knew exactly what he had got himself into.

    The man who saved Oxford University 2009

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