medical
med·i·cal/ˈmɛdɪkl̩/adjective, noun
medical is spelled M-E-D-I-C-A-L, 3 syllables: med·i·cal. The wrong spelling people search most is medicle: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 2,500 of all searches for the word. Medical is an adjective meaning “Of or pertaining to the practice of medicine”.
How many letters and syllables are in medical?
| Letters | 7: M-E-D-I-C-A-L |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3: med·i·cal |
| In writing | 145 times per million words; the 711th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, medicle, about 20 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell medical?
Medical is spelled M-E-D-I-C-A-L. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 2,268 of the searches for medical in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is medical?
Medical appears 145 times per million words in written English, the 711th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce medical?
- /ˈmɛdɪkl̩/
Medical has 3 syllables, split med·i·cal in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-medical.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with medical?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as medical.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: decimal, declaim, camelid.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of medical
- more medical comparative
- most medical superlative
- medicals plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does medical mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Of or pertaining to the practice of medicine.
medical doctor; medical student
- 2
Intended to have a therapeutic effect; medicinal.
medical marijuana; medical cannabis; medical treatment
- 3
Requiring medical treatment.
A costly medical condition can bankrupt you if it doesn't kill you first.
- 4
Pertaining to the state of one's health.
medical examination; medical exemption; medical history; medical record; medical diagnosis
- 5
Pertaining to or requiring treatment by other than surgical means.
medical ward
- 6
Pertaining to medication specifically (that is, pharmacotherapy), rather than to other aspects of medicine and surgery.
medical oncology, radiation oncology, and surgical oncology
noun
- 1
informalA medical examination.
You'll have to get a medical before you apply for that job.
- 2
archaicA medical practitioner.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate medical?
Wiktionary records 2 abbreviations of medical: Med, med.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Medical in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense of the practice of medicine:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | médical |
| German | medizinisch, ärztlich |
| Portuguese | médico |
| Spanish | médico |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does medical come from?
Borrowed from French médical, from Medieval Latin medicālis, from Latin medicus.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).