Racial

How to spell racial

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce racial

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does racial mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or based on the categories into which people are divided by ancestry, ethnicity, or physical characteristics.

Racial in a sentence

• The company introduced new training to address racial bias in hiring.

• The report examined racial disparities in access to healthcare.

Where does racial come from?

Language of origin: French

This adjective is built on the noun 'race' plus the Latin-derived suffix '-ial', which simply means 'relating to'. The noun 'race' reached English in the sixteenth century from French 'race', which in turn came from Italian 'razza', a word meaning 'breed, lineage, or kind' whose own earlier history is uncertain and much debated by scholars. For a long time 'race' carried the broad sense of any group descended from a common ancestor, including families and nations, before it narrowed toward its modern meanings. The adjective 'racial' itself is comparatively recent, appearing in English only in the late nineteenth century as discussion of human groups intensified. The spelling trap lies in the ending: although it sounds like '-shul', it is written '-cial', because the soft 'c' before 'i' produces that 'sh' sound, exactly as in 'social' and 'special'.

How the word is built

• rac- (from race, a group of people of common descent)
• -ial (adjective suffix meaning 'relating to')