Mythical

How to spell mythical

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce mythical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mythical mean?

1. adjectiveExisting only in myths or legends, or imaginary rather than real.

Mythical in a sentence

• The museum exhibit traced how each mythical creature appeared in ancient art.

• The promised bonus turned out to be mythical, because the funding never existed.

Where does mythical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek muthos, which simply meant a story, a tale, or something spoken aloud, before it narrowed to mean the traditional legends a culture tells about its gods and heroes. The Greek adjective muthikos described anything belonging to such legend, and Latin took it in as mythicus. English assembled the modern form 'mythical' in the late 1600s by attaching the familiar English ending -ical to the established root myth, giving the sense of 'existing only in myth' and, by extension, 'imaginary or invented'. The same muthos root sits inside myth, mythology, and mythos. The spelling trap is purely the Greek-flavoured letters: the unusual y standing in for a short vowel sound and the th that the y precedes.

How the word is built

• myth (from Greek muthos: story, legend)
• -ical (adjective suffix)