Normal

How to spell normal

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce normal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does normal mean?

1. adjectiveConforming to the usual, expected, or standard state of things.

Normal in a sentence

• After the storm passed, traffic returned to normal levels by morning.

• A normal working day for her runs from nine until five.

Where does normal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin normalis, which originally meant 'made according to the carpenter's square', from norma, the Latin name for the L-shaped square that builders and masons used to measure right angles. Because that tool defined what was straight and correct, norma came to mean a rule, a standard, or a pattern, and normalis was used in geometry for a line set at a true right angle (a sense still alive in mathematics today). English took the word in the 1600s, at first chiefly in that technical geometric sense, and only in the nineteenth century did the familiar everyday meaning of 'conforming to the usual standard or the common pattern' become widespread. The same root survives in 'enormous', literally something 'out of the norm', and in the word 'norm' itself. The spelling is regular and rarely trips writers, since it maps cleanly onto how it sounds.

How the word is built

• norm (from Latin norma: a carpenter's square, a rule)
• -al (adjective suffix)