sacrificial
/ˈsæk.ɹɪ.fɪʃ.əl/adjective
sacrificial is spelled S-A-C-R-I-F-I-C-I-A-L. The wrong spelling people search most is sacrifical: about 50 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 10 of all searches for the word. Sacrificial is an adjective meaning “Relating to sacrifice”.
How do you spell sacrificial?
Sacrificial is spelled S-A-C-R-I-F-I-C-I-A-L. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 10 of the searches for sacrificial 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.
What does sacrificial mean?
adjective
- 1
Relating to sacrifice.
The old sacrificial well is still there, but animals aren't thrown into it to appease monsters anymore.
- 2
Used as a sacrifice.
The sacrificial coating protects the hull, but because it takes the damage the hull doesn't, we must replace it annually.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce sacrificial?
- /ˈsæk.ɹɪ.fɪʃ.əl/
- /ˈsæk.ɹə.fɪʃ.əl/
Sacrificial has 4 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-sacrificial.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
How common is sacrificial?
Sacrificial appears 1.2 times per million words in written English, the 26,092nd 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).
Sacrificial in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense relating to sacrifice:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | sacrificiel |
| German | Opfer- |
| Portuguese | sacrificial |
| Spanish | sacrificial |
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 sacrificial come from?
Borrowed from Latin sacrificiālis (“sacrificial”), from sacrificium (“sacrifice”), from sacrificus (“sacrificial”), from sacrificō (“sacrifice”), from sacer (“sacred, holy”) + faciō (“do, make”). By surface analysis, sacrifice + -ial.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).