Clinical

How to spell clinical

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce clinical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does clinical mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the direct observation and treatment of patients rather than to theory or laboratory work.
2. adjectiveCoolly efficient and unemotional, treating something with detached precision.

Clinical in a sentence

• The new drug performed well in early clinical trials.

• He delivered the bad news in a flat, clinical tone.

• She spent two years in clinical practice before moving into research.

• The report analysed the layoffs with a clinical detachment that unsettled the staff.

Where does clinical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek kline, meaning a bed or couch, which itself came from the verb klinein, 'to lean or recline'. From kline the Greeks formed klinikos, describing something connected with a sickbed, and by extension the physician who attended a patient lying in one. Latin took this in as clinicus, and the adjective surfaced in English in the seventeenth century, originally tied very closely to the bedside care of the sick. Over time the medical sense broadened to cover anything based on direct observation of patients rather than theory, and from there a figurative meaning grew: the cool, detached precision of a doctor at work became a way to describe any dispassionate, unemotional manner. The same kline root reclines inside 'recline' and 'incline', and remembering the single l of that Greek bed helps guard against doubling it in the spelling.

How the word is built

• clin- (from Greek kline: bed, sickbed)
• -ic (relating to)
• -al (adjective suffix)