Ministerial

How to spell ministerial

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce ministerial

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ministerial mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to a government minister or to a department of government.
2. adjectiveRelating to the work or office of a member of the clergy.

Ministerial in a sentence

• The policy needs ministerial approval before it can take effect.

• His ministerial duties included visiting the sick and leading services.

• Reporters waited outside for the ministerial statement on the budget.

• The college trains students for ministerial careers in the church.

Where does ministerial come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin minister, meaning 'servant' or 'attendant', which was itself built on minus, meaning 'less', so a minister was originally a lesser person who served a greater one. The adjective ministerialis described anything belonging to such service or office. English took 'minister' through Old French in the medieval period, first for a servant of the church and later for a high officer of the state, and the adjective 'ministerial' followed, settling into use by the 1600s. The sense fork survives today: it can mean 'relating to a government minister or department' or 'relating to the work of the clergy'. A useful spelling memory is that 'ministerial' simply keeps the whole word 'minister' intact and adds -ial, so the trap is the unstressed vowels and the -terial ending rather than any hidden letter.

How the word is built

• minister (servant, official, from Latin minister)
• -ial (adjective suffix: relating to)