CHAPTER 31

Using al, tial, cial, sial

Many nouns can be made into adjectives by the addition of the suffix al:

(^) Sometimes it is necessary to preserve or create a soft s sound before the al, so an i is inserted, resulting
in either cial or tial. There are about seventy commonly used words that employ one of these endings.
Because they sound more or less, the same, the problem is which one to use.
Historical footnote:
In the overly quaint Ye Olde Tea Shoppe, the word ye was originally pronounced the. The y takes the
place of an ancient letter called a thorn, now no longer used, that had the th sound. The word yclept, much
loved by history buffs, is more properly clept, as the prefix y indicates the past participle only.
Spelling rule #1: The vast majority of words in this group will end in tial. This includes all words
coming from a root that ends in t:
(^) Spelling rule #2: Words that come from a root that ends in a soft c or an x will use the cial ending:
(^) Spelling rule #3: A major exception is any word that comes from a root that ends in ence or ance.
These will use tial:
(^) Anomalies include equinoctial, palatial, and axial.
Note that only two commonly used English words use the highly logical sial ending: ambrosial and
controversial.
Note also that some dictionaries offer a choice between spacial and spatial. Obviously, the correct
spelling should be spacial. Similarly, the adjective palatial makes absolutely no sense, but the logical
palacial has not yet appeared in our dictionaries.