Neuronal

How to spell neuronal

8 letters · 3 syllables

10 of the 53 people asked to spell neuronal in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

How to pronounce neuronal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does neuronal mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or made up of neurons, the cells that carry signals in the nervous system.

Neuronal in a sentence

• The scan measured neuronal activity in the patient's brain.

• Researchers studied how the drug affected neuronal connections.

Where does neuronal come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is built on neuron, which English took directly from the Greek neuron, a word that originally meant 'sinew', 'tendon', or 'cord' rather than a nerve cell. In ancient anatomy the line between sinews, ligaments, and nerves was blurred, so the same term covered any tough fibrous strand, and the sense of a thread carrying signals only sharpened much later. The modern scientific 'neuron', meaning a nerve cell, was popularised in the 1890s when researchers such as Wilhelm Waldeyer named the basic units of the nervous system. The adjective neuronal then formed by adding the Latin-derived ending -al, which turns a noun into a describing word, giving the meaning 'relating to neurons'. The same Greek root survives in relatives like 'neurology' and 'neurotic', and the spelling trap lies in keeping the single -on- of neuron before adding -al, since writers sometimes drift toward 'neural' or double letters that do not belong.

How the word is built

• neuron (from Greek neuron: nerve, sinew)
• -al (adjective suffix)