Canonical

How to spell canonical

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce canonical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does canonical mean?

1. adjectiveAccepted as authoritative, standard, or conforming to an established rule.
2. adjectiveReduced to the simplest, standard, or agreed form used as a reference.

Canonical in a sentence

• The textbook offers the canonical account of how the experiment was first conducted.

• The database stores each address in a canonical format so duplicates are easy to spot.

• Most scholars treat that biography as the canonical source on the composer's life.

• The developers converted every file path to its canonical form before comparing them.

Where does canonical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the ancient Greek 'kanon', which literally meant a straight rod or measuring stick used by builders and carpenters; from that physical sense it came to mean a rule, a standard, or a fixed list. Latin borrowed it as 'canon' and formed the adjective 'canonicus', meaning 'according to the rule', a term the early Christian church applied to texts and clergy that conformed to church law. English absorbed 'canonical' in the late Middle Ages, at first in strictly religious contexts such as canonical hours and the canon of scripture, before broadening to mean anything accepted as authoritative or standard. The same 'kanon' root survives in 'canon' itself, in 'canonise', and even in the musical 'canon' where one part imitates another by a fixed rule. The single 'n' in the middle and the '-ical' ending are the usual spelling traps, since the word looks as though it might double a consonant like 'cannon'.

How the word is built

• canon (rule, standard, accepted list)
• -ical (adjective suffix)