Bacterial

How to spell bacterial

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce bacterial

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bacterial mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to, caused by, or consisting of bacteria.

Bacterial in a sentence

• The doctor prescribed antibiotics to clear the bacterial infection.

• Proper handwashing reduces the spread of bacterial contamination in the kitchen.

Where does bacterial come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek baktērion, a diminutive of baktron meaning 'staff' or 'rod', so the literal sense was 'little stick'. This name was chosen in the nineteenth century because many of the first microbes observed under the microscope had a straight, rod-like shape. The Latinised noun 'bacterium' (with its plural 'bacteria') was coined by the German scientist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg around 1838, and English adopted it soon after as microscopy advanced. The adjective 'bacterial' was then built in English by adding the ordinary '-al' ending to the stem 'bacteri-', giving a word for anything relating to or caused by these organisms. The spelling trap lives in that ending: the word finishes in '-rial', not '-real', and keeps the single 'r' of the root.

How the word is built

• bacteri- (from bacterium, a rod-shaped microbe)
• -al (adjective suffix: relating to)