Virtual

How to spell virtual

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce virtual

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does virtual mean?

1. adjectiveExisting in effect or essence though not in actual fact or form.
2. adjectiveSimulated by computer software or existing only in a digital environment rather than physically.

Virtual in a sentence

• The agreement gave the company a virtual monopoly over the market.

• The team held a virtual meeting because half the staff were working from home.

• After three rounds of layoffs the office became a virtual ghost town.

• The museum offers a virtual tour of every gallery on its website.

Where does virtual come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin virtus, which meant 'strength', 'manliness', or 'moral worth', itself built on vir, the Latin word for 'man'. From virtus medieval Latin formed virtualis, used in scholarly writing to mean something that has the power or effect of a thing without being that thing in its full physical form. English took the word in the late 1300s, originally to describe a quality that was present in effect or essence rather than in actual fact. Over the centuries it kept that core idea of 'effectively but not formally so', which is why we say a job is virtually finished. In the late twentieth century computing seized on the word for things that are simulated or exist only digitally, as in virtual reality and virtual memory, giving an old philosophical term a thoroughly modern life. The single t and the -ual ending trip people up, since the link to 'virtue' (which shares the same root) is easy to forget.

How the word is built

• virtu- (from Latin virtus: strength, worth, virtue)
• -al (adjective suffix)