Curricular

How to spell curricular

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce curricular

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does curricular mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the subjects and courses that make up a formal programme of study.

Curricular in a sentence

• The school reviewed its curricular content before the new term.

• Music lessons are part of the standard curricular timetable here.

Where does curricular come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin curriculum, which literally meant 'a running' or 'a racecourse', and it was built on the verb currere, meaning 'to run'. In late Latin and Renaissance Latin the racing image was applied to education, so a curriculum came to mean the fixed 'course' a student runs through. English took up curriculum in the early 1600s, especially in Scottish universities, to describe a planned programme of study. The adjective curricular, meaning 'relating to the curriculum', followed later and is most familiar today through its companion 'extracurricular', the activities that fall outside the formal course. The same currere root keeps running through everyday words such as 'current', 'courier' and 'corridor', and the double r at the start is the spelling detail worth fixing in memory.

How the word is built

• curricul- (from Latin curriculum: a course of study)
• -ar (adjective suffix: relating to)