Familial

How to spell familial

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce familial

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does familial mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to a family or occurring among members of a family.

Familial in a sentence

• The doctor explained that the high cholesterol was familial and likely inherited from both parents.

• Holiday photographs revealed a strong familial resemblance across three generations.

Where does familial come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adjective comes ultimately from the Latin familia, which meant a household and originally referred to the body of servants and dependants in a home before it broadened to mean the family as we now understand it. The Latin root famulus literally meant 'servant', so the earliest sense was bound up with the entire domestic establishment rather than blood relatives alone. English took 'familial' directly from French familial in the nineteenth century, when scientists and doctors needed a precise word for traits and conditions that run in families. The word stays close to its parent 'family', and remembering that link explains the spelling: it keeps the same famili- stem with a single -al ending, not the doubled letters people sometimes expect. It is now common in medicine, where 'familial' describes hereditary conditions, and in everyday writing about family ties.

How the word is built

• famili- (from Latin familia: household, family)
• -al (adjective suffix)