Mythological

How to spell mythological

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce mythological

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mythological mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or found in myths, the traditional stories of gods, heroes, and legendary events.

Mythological in a sentence

• The museum exhibit traced the mythological origins of several ancient festivals.

• Her thesis compared mythological creatures across Greek and Norse traditions.

Where does mythological come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek mythos, which simply meant a spoken story, a tale, or a report, with no implication that it was untrue. The Greeks combined mythos with logos, meaning 'word' or 'account', to form mythologia, the telling or study of such legends. Latin took this in as mythologia, and it passed into English through French and scholarly Latin around the sixteenth century, at first describing collections of ancient tales about gods and heroes. The adjective mythological was built by adding the familiar -ical ending, the same one seen in 'logical' and 'biological'. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: the 'y' that English usually expects to be an 'i', and the soft schwa vowels in 'mytho-LOG-ical' that give no clue to the letters underneath.

How the word is built

• myth (story of gods/heroes, from Greek mythos: tale, story)
• -o- (linking vowel)
• log (from logos: word, account, study)
• -ical (adjective suffix)