Instructional

How to spell instructional

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce instructional

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does instructional mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to teaching, training, or providing knowledge and guidance.

Instructional in a sentence

• The company produced an instructional video for new employees.

• The museum offers instructional workshops for visiting schools.

Where does instructional come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb instruere, which literally meant 'to build into' or 'to set in order', from in- 'in, onto' and struere 'to build or pile up'. From the same struere come a whole family of English words, including 'structure', 'construct', and 'destroy', all of which carry the underlying idea of building or arranging. The past participle instructus gave rise to the sense of furnishing or equipping someone with knowledge, so to 'instruct' became to build up a person's understanding. English took 'instruct' and 'instruction' from Latin by way of Old French in the late Middle Ages, and the adjective 'instructional', meaning 'relating to teaching', was assembled later by adding the familiar -al ending. Remembering the buried 'struct' (as in structure) helps fix the spelling, since the trickiest part is the unstressed -tion-al run of vowels that all reduce to a soft schwa.

How the word is built

• in- (in, onto)
• struct (from Latin struere: to build, arrange)
• -ion (noun-forming)
• -al (adjective-forming)