Lethal

How to spell lethal

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce lethal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lethal mean?

1. adjectiveCapable of causing death; deadly.

Lethal in a sentence

• The venom of this snake is lethal within minutes.

• Workers handling the chemical wore suits to guard against the lethal fumes.

Where does lethal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Lethal comes from the Latin letalis or lethalis, meaning 'deadly' or 'fatal', built on the noun letum, which meant 'death' or 'destruction'. The spelling with an 'h' arose by association with the Greek word Lethe, the mythological river of the underworld whose waters caused forgetfulness, even though the two words are not truly related in origin. English adopted the word in the early 1600s in its medical and military sense of something capable of causing death. The 'th' in the middle is the spelling trap: writers who think of the root letum might expect a plain 't', but the established English form keeps the 'th'. A close relative is the literary word 'Lethean', meaning causing forgetfulness, which preserves the same misleading 'h'.

How the word is built

• leth- (from Latin letum: death)
• -al (adjective suffix)