Marginal

How to spell marginal

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce marginal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does marginal mean?

1. adjectiveSo small or slight as to be barely worth considering.
2. adjectiveRelating to the change caused by producing or consuming one additional unit.
3. adjectiveDescribing a constituency or seat won or held by a very small majority.

Marginal in a sentence

• The new process gave only a marginal improvement in speed.

• The firm calculated the marginal cost of making one extra unit.

• Both parties poured resources into the marginal seat before the vote.

• The difference between the two laptops is marginal at best.

• Economists study how marginal revenue compares with total revenue.

• The result in that marginal district stayed uncertain until the final count.

Where does marginal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows from the Latin noun margo, with the stem margin-, which literally meant an edge or border, the rim that runs around the outside of something. English took the noun 'margin' through Old French in the late 1300s, first for the blank border of a written page and then more broadly for any edge or limit. The adjective 'marginal' was formed later, by the 1500s, to mean 'written in the margin' or 'belonging to the edge', and from there it drifted naturally toward 'on the outer limit of importance', hence the modern sense of slight or barely significant. Economists adopted it in the 1800s for quantities measured at the edge of a quantity, as in marginal cost, the cost of one more unit. Remembering that a margin is the edge of the page is the surest way to keep the single g and the -al ending in place.

How the word is built

• margin (from Latin margo, marginis: edge, border)
• -al (adjective suffix)