Medicinal

How to spell medicinal

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce medicinal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does medicinal mean?

1. adjectiveHaving healing properties or used to treat illness.

Medicinal in a sentence

• The herb is grown for its medicinal properties.

• She keeps a few medicinal plants on the kitchen windowsill.

Where does medicinal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin medicinalis, meaning 'relating to medicine', which was built on medicina, the art of healing or the remedy itself. That noun in turn rests on medicus, meaning 'physician' or 'healing', from the verb mederi, 'to heal' or 'to look after'. English took the word in by way of Old French during the 1300s, and it has always carried the sense of something with curative properties. The same mederi root quietly survives in 'remedy' and 'medicate', and even in 'meditate', since both healing and meditating share an older idea of taking measured care. The spelling trap lies in the soft middle: the stressed second syllable swallows the rest into a row of unstressed schwa sounds, so writers must remember the single c, the single d, and the -inal rather than -inel ending.

How the word is built

• medic- (from Latin medicus: physician, healing)
• -in- (as in medicine)
• -al (adjective suffix)