Marital

How to spell marital

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce marital

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does marital mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to marriage or to the relationship between a married couple.

Marital in a sentence

• The couple sought counselling to repair their marital problems.

• The lawyer specialised in dividing marital assets during divorce.

Where does marital come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin maritalis, meaning 'relating to marriage' or 'belonging to a married couple'. It was built on maritus, the Latin noun for a husband or married man, which in turn is thought to derive from maritare, 'to marry', and ultimately from a root tied to a young woman or wife. English adopted the word in the early 1600s to describe anything connected with marriage or the relationship between spouses. A close relative is the verb 'marry' itself, which travelled into English through Old French marier, also from that same Latin family. The spelling trap is that 'marital' looks almost identical to 'martial' (relating to war), the difference being only the order of the letters after 'mar', so keeping the root maritus in mind helps anchor the 'mari' sequence.

How the word is built

• marit- (from Latin maritus: husband, married man)
• -al (adjective suffix: relating to)