Musical

How to spell musical

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce musical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does musical mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to music, or skilled in or fond of music.
2. nounA play or film in which the story is told partly through songs and dance.

Musical in a sentence

• adjective

  The festival featured a wide range of musical acts.

• noun

  They booked tickets for a West End musical on Saturday night.

• adjective

  She comes from a very musical family of pianists.

• noun

  The school staged a musical to raise money for new instruments.

Where does musical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek mousike, meaning 'the art of the Muses', the nine goddesses who presided over poetry, song, and dance in ancient mythology. The Greeks used it broadly for any cultivated art governed by the Muses, but it narrowed over time toward the art of sound. Latin took it up as musica, and Old French passed it to English as 'music' in the 1200s. The adjective 'musical' was formed by adding the suffix -al, and it appears in English from the late 1300s to mean 'relating to music'. The much later sense of a stage show full of songs, simply called a 'musical', is a twentieth-century shortening of 'musical comedy'. The spelling is regular: just keep the single -al ending and resist adding an extra letter.

How the word is built

• music (from Greek mousikos: of the Muses)
• -al (adjective/noun suffix)