Tidal

How to spell tidal

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tidal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tidal mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or caused by the rise and fall of the sea.

Tidal in a sentence

• The harbour is only accessible at certain points in the tidal cycle.

• Engineers built a barrier to harness tidal energy for the coastal town.

Where does tidal come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This adjective is built on the noun 'tide', a thoroughly native English word that descends from the Old English 'tid', meaning a 'time', 'season', or 'period'. The same Germanic root survives in German 'Zeit' (time) and in the old English sense of 'tide' still visible in words like 'Eastertide' and 'noontide'. Only in the later medieval period did 'tide' narrow toward its modern nautical meaning, the regular rise and fall of the sea, because that movement was so reliably tied to fixed times of day. The adjective 'tidal' itself is comparatively recent, appearing in the early 1800s when the suffix '-al' was added to make 'of or relating to tides'. The spelling trap is the silent-ish unstressed second syllable: it sounds like 'tide-ul', so writers sometimes add a stray 'e' or mishear the ending as '-le'.

How the word is built

• tide (rise and fall of the sea)
• -al (adjective suffix)