Renal

How to spell renal

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce renal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does renal mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the kidneys or their function.

Renal in a sentence

• The patient was referred to a specialist after tests showed declining renal function.

• Chronic renal disease often progresses slowly over many years.

Where does renal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Renal comes from the Latin adjective renalis, meaning 'of the kidneys', which was built on the noun renes, the ordinary Latin word for the kidneys. English took the word up through medical and anatomical Latin in the early 1600s, when scholars were rapidly enriching the language with precise technical terms drawn straight from classical roots. The same renes root sits behind a handful of other anatomical words, including 'reins' in its old sense of the loins or kidneys and the gland name 'adrenal', literally meaning 'beside the kidney' (ad- 'next to' plus renal). Because the word is purely Latin and almost never appears outside medicine, its spelling is regular and untroubled: a clean ren- stem with the familiar -al ending. The one thing to watch is the single vowel and single consonant throughout, since there are no doubled letters or silent traps to second-guess.

How the word is built

• ren- (from Latin renes: kidneys)
• -al (adjective suffix: relating to)