Biblical

How to spell biblical

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce biblical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does biblical mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to, contained in, or characteristic of the Bible.

Biblical in a sentence

• The museum exhibit traced biblical scenes through medieval paintings.

• His lecture compared the biblical flood story with older Mesopotamian myths.

Where does biblical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This adjective derives from the noun Bible, which reached English through the Old French bible and the Latin biblia, a word treated as singular but originally a Greek plural meaning 'the books'. The Greek source was biblion, 'a little book' or 'scroll', a diminutive of biblos, meaning the papyrus or paper itself. That word in turn is widely thought to come from Byblos, the Phoenician port (in modern Lebanon) through which papyrus was traded to the Greek world, so the name of a trading city ended up naming the written page. By the late 1700s English had formed 'biblical' to describe anything relating to the Bible, and the spelling keeps the single central 'b' of the older root rather than doubling it. The same biblion root survives in 'bibliography' and 'bibliophile', which is a useful reminder that biblical begins with the bookish bibl-.

How the word is built

• bibl- (from biblos: book, the Bible)
• -ical (adjective suffix)