Belonging to the Christian tradition that grew out of John Wesley (1703–1791), an English preacher; also a person in that tradition. In everyday use, *Wesleyan* and *Methodist* point at much the same group of churches, and many people treat them as the same word. If you want to be careful: *Methodist* is the wide, ordinary name for the churches that came from Wesley's movement, while *Wesleyan* points more directly back to Wesley himself and to what he taught — so it turns up in the names of particular churches ("the Wesleyan Methodist Church"), in the names of schools and colleges founded by them, and in talk about their beliefs ("Wesleyan theology"). Some smaller churches that split off keep *Wesleyan* in their name to say "we are the ones who kept to Wesley". Note that it is written with a capital W, because it comes from a person's name. Also note that in the United States several well-known universities carry the name — Wesleyan University, Ohio Wesleyan, Illinois Wesleyan — and most of them are now ordinary non-religious schools that simply keep the old name from the day they were founded. So when a young American says "I went to Wesleyan", they are usually telling you their school, not their religion. The word is formal and fairly rare; ESL students are far more likely to need *Methodist*.