Angular

How to spell angular

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce angular

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does angular mean?

1. adjectiveHaving sharp corners or edges, or describing a lean, bony, sharp-featured appearance.

Angular in a sentence

• The new building had a stark, angular design with no curves at all.

• His tall, angular frame made off-the-peg suits hard to fit.

Where does angular come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin angularis, meaning 'having corners' or 'relating to a corner', which was built on angulus, the everyday Latin word for a corner or angle. That noun is related to a wider family of words across early languages all carrying the sense of bending or a bent joint, the way a knee or an elbow turns a line into a corner. English took angular in during the early 1600s, first to describe shapes that are full of sharp corners and edges, and it soon extended to people who look bony, lean, and sharp-featured. The same angulus root still sits openly inside the plain word 'angle', which is the easiest way to remember the spelling: keep the 'angul' of angle and simply swap in the '-ar' ending. The trap is purely that unstressed final '-ar', which sounds exactly like '-er' but is spelled with an a because it descends from the Latin -aris suffix.

How the word is built

• angul- (from Latin angulus: corner, angle)
• -ar (adjective suffix meaning 'relating to')