Geological

How to spell geological

10 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce geological

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does geological mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the structure of the earth, its rocks, and the processes that shape them.

Geological in a sentence

• The survey team collected geological samples from each layer of the cliff.

• The canyon formed over millions of years through slow geological change.

Where does geological come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is built from the Greek elements ge, meaning 'earth' or 'land', and logia, meaning 'study of' or 'discourse about', from logos 'word, reason, account'. The combining form geo- has long been the standard way of building English words that concern the planet, as in geography and geometry. The noun geology was coined in scientific Latin during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as naturalists began systematically studying rocks and strata, and geological followed as its adjective in the late 1700s. The same -logia ending that gives us biology and psychology accounts for the spelling here, since the unstressed middle of the word hides the original 'log' root. Keeping that geo- prefix and the 'log' core in mind helps explain why the schwa-filled ending reliably resolves to -ical.

How the word is built

• geo- (earth)
• log (study, discourse)
• -ical (adjective suffix)