Functional

How to spell functional

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce functional

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does functional mean?

1. adjectiveDesigned to be practical and useful, or operating and working as intended.
2. adjectiveRelating to the way something operates or to the role it performs, rather than its appearance or structure.

Functional in a sentence

• The new kitchen is both stylish and functional.

• The team divided the project along functional lines, grouping staff by the tasks they performed.

• Engineers confirmed that the backup generator was fully functional after the repair.

• Doctors found no physical damage and described the problem as functional rather than structural.

Where does functional come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb fungi, meaning 'to perform, carry out, or discharge a duty'. From its past participle stem functus came the noun functio, which described the performing or executing of a task. English took in 'function' through French in the 1500s as a noun for a proper activity or duty, and the adjective 'functional' followed later, by the early nineteenth century, to mean 'relating to a function' and then 'practical, working as intended'. The same Latin fungi root quietly survives in words such as 'defunct', literally something that has finished performing, and 'perfunctory', a task done merely to get it over with. A useful spelling anchor is the buried 'ct' from the participle functus, since writers sometimes forget the hard c before the t.

How the word is built

• funct- (from Latin fungi: to perform, carry out)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)
• -al (adjective suffix)