Mystical

How to spell mystical

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce mystical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mystical mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to spiritual mystery, or having an air of magic and wonder that goes beyond ordinary understanding.

Mystical in a sentence

• The old monastery had a mystical calm that visitors found hard to describe.

• She wrote a thesis on the mystical traditions of medieval poetry.

Where does mystical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek mystikos, meaning 'relating to secret rites or mysteries', which was built on mystes, a person initiated into a hidden religious ceremony. That noun in turn came from the verb myein, which literally meant 'to close', referring to the way initiates kept their lips and eyes shut about what they had seen. The sense travelled into Latin as mysticus and then into Old French before reaching English in the late 1300s, at first describing sacred or spiritually symbolic things. Over time the meaning broadened from strictly religious mystery to anything that seems otherworldly, magical, or beyond ordinary understanding. The same Greek root sits inside the everyday words 'mystery' and 'mystic', and the giveaway spelling clue is that opening 'my-', a 'y' rather than an 'i', which is the trap that most often catches writers.

How the word is built

• myst- (from Greek mystes: an initiate into secret rites)
• -ic (forming an adjective)
• -al (adjective suffix)