Memorial

How to spell memorial

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce memorial

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does memorial mean?

1. nounA structure, object, or event established to honour and preserve the memory of a person or events.
2. adjectiveServing to commemorate or preserve the memory of a person or event.

Memorial in a sentence

• noun

  The town built a stone memorial to the fallen soldiers.

• adjective

  The choir sang at the memorial service for the late director.

• noun

  Families gathered at the memorial to lay flowers each year.

• adjective

  Staff observed a memorial silence on the anniversary of the accident.

Where does memorial come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin memorialis, meaning 'belonging to memory' or 'serving to remind', which was formed on memoria, 'memory', and ultimately on memor, an adjective meaning 'mindful' or 'remembering'. English took it up in the late 1300s by way of Old French memorial, at first as an adjective for anything connected with remembrance and soon also as a noun for a written record or a thing kept to preserve a memory. The same memor root sits inside everyday relatives such as 'memory', 'remember', and 'commemorate', which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps the double 'm' only at the start and a single 'm' in the middle. Over the centuries the noun narrowed toward its modern sense of a monument, ceremony, or object honouring a person or event. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle: the '-mor-' is easy to slur in speech, yet it must be written with that clear 'o'.

How the word is built

• memor- (from Latin memor: mindful, remembering)
• -ial (adjective and noun suffix)