Elemental

How to spell elemental

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce elemental

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does elemental mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the basic forces of nature, or being fundamental, primitive, and powerful.
2. nounA spirit or creature in folklore and fiction said to embody one of the natural elements such as fire or water.

Elemental in a sentence

• adjective

  The climbers faced elemental forces of wind, ice, and snow on the summit.

• noun

  The role-playing game lets players summon a fire elemental to guard the camp.

• adjective

  Safe drinking water is an elemental need that every settlement must meet.

• noun

  In the old legend a water elemental rose from the lake to protect the village.

Where does elemental come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin elementum, which meant a rudiment, a first principle, or one of the basic building blocks of matter, the very stuff from which everything else is made. Roman writers used it for the four classical components of the physical world: earth, water, air, and fire, and the word also covered the basic letters a child first learned, so it carried the sense of 'fundamentals' from early on. English took element from Old French element in the 1200s, and the adjective elemental was formed later, by the 1500s, to describe anything belonging to those raw, basic forces of nature. Over time it gathered a more dramatic sense, used of storms, grief, or rage that feel primitive and unstoppable, as if springing straight from the elements themselves. The spelling keeps the full element intact before the -al, so the trap is the row of unstressed vowels in the middle, where the second e and the a both blur into a faint schwa.

How the word is built

• element (from Latin elementum: a first principle or basic part)
• -al (adjective suffix forming 'relating to')