Retinal

How to spell retinal

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce retinal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does retinal mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the retina, the light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye.

Retinal in a sentence

• The optometrist scheduled a retinal scan to check for early damage.

• Diabetes can cause gradual retinal deterioration if it is left untreated.

Where does retinal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word is built on retina, a medieval Latin coinage for the light-sensitive membrane at the back of the eye. That noun is generally traced to the Latin rete, meaning 'net', because early anatomists thought the fine web of blood vessels covering the membrane resembled a net spread across the back of the eyeball. The adjective form retinal, meaning 'of or relating to the retina', emerged in medical and scientific English in the nineteenth century as the study of the eye advanced. In the twentieth century biochemists borrowed the same spelling for retinal, the aldehyde of vitamin A that the retina uses to detect light, which is a neat full circle back to the organ that gave the word its name. The single 't' and single 'n' are the spelling trap here: because the word sounds compact, writers sometimes double a consonant that the Latin root never doubled.

How the word is built

• retin- (from Latin retina: the inner light-sensitive layer of the eye)
• -al (adjective/noun suffix)