Medal

How to spell medal

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce medal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does medal mean?

1. nounA flat metal disc awarded as an honour for achievement, bravery, or sporting success.
2. verbTo win a medal in a sporting competition.

Medal in a sentence

• noun

  The swimmer won a gold medal at the championships.

• verb

  The cyclist hopes to medal at the next Olympic Games.

• noun

  His grandfather's war medal hangs in a frame on the wall.

• verb

  Only three athletes can medal in any single event.

Where does medal come from?

Language of origin: French

Medal entered English in the late 1500s from the French médaille, which France had taken from the Italian medaglia. Behind both lies a Vulgar Latin form medalia, an alteration of the Late Latin medialia, meaning literally 'something worth half' or 'a half-coin', from the Latin medius 'middle' or 'half'. The earliest medals really were coin-like metal discs, often commemorative pieces struck to mark an event or honour a person, so the link to coinage is genuine rather than fanciful. Over time the word came to mean any flat metal award given for achievement, especially in sport and military service. A useful spelling note: medal ends in -dal and is a quiet homophone of meddle 'to interfere', so the trap is choosing the right one rather than the letters themselves.

How the word is built

• medal (whole word, from Latin medialia: a half-coin) treated as an unanalysable root; no productive prefix or suffix