Spiritually

How to spell spiritually

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce spiritually

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does spiritually mean?

1. adverbIn a way that relates to the human spirit or soul rather than to physical or material things.

Spiritually in a sentence

• The retreat left her feeling spiritually refreshed after a stressful year.

• Many people find that walking in the mountains restores them spiritually.

Where does spiritually come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin spiritus, which literally meant 'breath' or 'breathing', from the verb spirare 'to breathe'. Early thinkers linked the act of breathing with the life force or soul that animates a body, so spiritus came to mean 'spirit' or 'soul' as well. The adjective spiritualis, meaning 'of the breath' and then 'of the soul', passed through Old French as spirituel before reaching English around the 1300s, largely in religious writing. The English adverb spiritually was formed by adding the native ending -ly to spiritual, and the whole family of breathing words (inspire, respire, aspire, perspire) shares the same spirare root. The spelling trap sits in the unstressed middle and the ending: the -ual collapses into a vague schwa in speech, and adding -ly to a word that already ends in -l produces the doubled 'll' that writers often drop.

How the word is built

• spirit (from Latin spiritus: breath)
• -ual (adjective suffix)
• -ly (adverb suffix)