virial
adjective, noun
virial is an adjective meaning “Of or pertaining to the interactive forces between molecules or particles” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-I-R-I-A-L, and it appears about once in every 24 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does virial mean?
adjective
- 1
Of or pertaining to the interactive forces between molecules or particles.
noun
- 1
One-half of the product of the stress of attraction or repulsion with the distance between two particles.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of virial
- virials plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is virial?
Virial appears about once in every 24 million words in written English, the 148,541st 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).
Where does virial come from?
From Latin vīs (vīs has a hidden "r" that shows in forms such as the genitive plural, vīrium).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).