Feral

How to spell feral

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce feral

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does feral mean?

1. adjectiveIn a wild, untamed state, especially after having once been domesticated or cultivated.

Feral in a sentence

• A colony of feral cats had taken over the abandoned warehouse.

• The council set traps to control the feral pigs damaging local crops.

Where does feral come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin adjective ferus, meaning 'wild' or 'untamed', and the closely related noun fera, meaning 'a wild animal'. From these roots Latin formed feralis, which English borrowed in the early seventeenth century to describe creatures living in a wild, undomesticated state. The core idea has always been the contrast between the tame and the savage: a feral cat is one that has reverted to the wild after living among humans. The same Latin family lies behind the rarer word 'fierce', which travelled into English through Old French ferus, so both words share an ancestral sense of untamed ferocity. The spelling stays close to its Latin source, with the single 'r' and the unstressed '-al' ending being the points where writers occasionally hesitate.

How the word is built

• fer- (from Latin ferus/fera: wild, wild beast)
• -al (adjective suffix: of the nature of)