Vertical

How to spell vertical

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce vertical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vertical mean?

1. adjectivePositioned straight up and down, at a right angle to the horizon or a level surface.

Vertical in a sentence

• The survey marked each vertical line on the building plan.

• The climbers studied the nearly vertical rock face before starting.

Where does vertical come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verticalis, meaning 'at the top' or 'overhead', which was built on vertex, the word for the highest point, the crown of the head, or the pivot around which something turns. Vertex itself comes from the verb vertere, meaning 'to turn', because the vertex was imagined as the point about which the heavens seemed to turn. English took the word in during the late 1500s, at first in astronomy to describe a point directly above the observer, and only later settled into its modern geometric sense of a line running straight up and down. The same vertere root turns up in a whole family of English words, including convert, reverse, and even vertigo, the dizzy sensation of the world spinning. Remembering that link to 'turn' and 'vertex' helps fix the opening vert- and the unstressed -ical ending that trips writers up.

How the word is built

• vert- (from Latin vertere: to turn)
• -ic- (relating to)
• -al (adjective suffix)