Cardinal

How to spell cardinal

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce cardinal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cardinal mean?

1. adjectiveOf the greatest importance; fundamental or central to something.
2. nounA senior official of the Roman Catholic Church, ranking just below the pope.
3. nounA North American songbird, the male of which has bright red plumage.
4. nounA number denoting quantity (such as one, two, three) rather than order.

Cardinal in a sentence

• adjective

  Breaking confidentiality was the cardinal error that cost her the contract.

• noun

  The newly appointed cardinal travelled to Rome for the ceremony.

• noun

  A male cardinal landed on the feeder, its red feathers vivid against the snow.

• noun

  The teacher explained that 'three' is a cardinal while 'third' is ordinal.

• adjective

  The cardinal rule of the workshop is to unplug every tool before cleaning it.

• noun

  Each cardinal wore the traditional scarlet robe during the procession.

Where does cardinal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin cardinalis, meaning 'serving as a hinge' or 'principal', which was built on cardo (stem cardin-), the ordinary Latin noun for a door hinge or pivot. The metaphor is easy to picture: just as a door turns on its hinge, the most important things are the ones on which everything else depends, so cardinalis came to mean 'chief' or 'fundamental'. From this sense the senior clergy of the Roman Catholic Church became known as cardinals, the men on whom the governance of the Church was felt to turn. English took the word in during the 1100s and 1200s, partly through Old French, keeping both the church meaning and the broader sense of 'most important'. The bright red North American songbird earned the name later because its plumage matched the scarlet robes worn by those churchmen, and the spelling preserves the buried Latin hinge, cardin-, that explains all of these uses.

How the word is built

• cardin- (from Latin cardo, cardinis: hinge, pivot)
• -al (adjective/noun suffix)