Meanings
plural Etsians
- A seller on the American e-commerce service Etsy.
Etsying, as any Etsian (as Etsy sellers call themselves) will tell you, is a highly addictive pastime.
2013, Emily Matchar, Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity, Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 732 more examples
She "quit" her "day job' to dedicate more time" to her "family" and "business." mommymogul [Esty user] hopes to "grow" her "business to the point" that she "can quit" her "day job (like so many of the stories" she has "read about fellow etsians)."^([sic])
2015, Michele White, quoting mommymogul, Producing Women: The Internet, Traditional Femininity, Queerness, and Creativity, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 37This feeling of being a part of a global movement is to a great extent enabled by the spatial quality of Etsy, being both locally and globally embedded. Etsy's spatial dimensions are thus a key characteristic of this global movement toward sustainability, as it is referred to by Etsians.
2018, Lydia Maria Arantes, “Mapping Etsy: Reflections on (Spatial) Relations in an E-Commerce for Handmade Things”, in Clare Burke, Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood, editor, Crafting in the World: Materiality in the Making, Springer International Publishing, →ISBN, page 133
Origin
From Etsy + -ian (“one from, belonging to”); Etsy was named in June 2005 by co-founder Robert Kalin as a nonsense word inspired by the Italian phrase eh, si (“huh, yes”), which he repeatedly heard in the film 8½ (1963) and erroneously transcribed as etsi.
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
Etsian. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Etsian
“Etsian.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Etsian. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Etsian,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Etsian.
Source: Etsian on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.