September 24, 1999

-ic, -ical

I've been wondering about the suffixes -ic and -ical. Often, they seem redundant to me. I noticed around the advent of Microsoft Windows people started to refer to "graphical user interface" where previously I had always heard and used "graphic user interface."

OK, I'll try to demystify the suffixes -ic and -ical with the help of Random House Webster's College Dictionary.

The suffix -ic forms adjectives from other parts of speech. It occurred originally in Greek and Latin loanwords (metallic; poetic; archaic) and, on this model, is used to mean 'having some characteristics of' (sophomoric); 'in the style of' (Byronic); and 'pertaining to a family of peoples or languages' (Semitic).

The suffix -ical is obviously a combination of -ic and -al, used in forming adjectives from nouns (rhetorical). Originally it provided synonyms to adjectives ending in -ic (poetical), though some of these forms are now different in meaning (economical; historical). Some -ical forms existed in older English but are now obsolete, such as tragical and majestical.

Pairs such as classic, classical; economic, economical; historic, historical are different in meaning, whereas pairs such as geographic, geographical are similar in semantic range.

The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, Third Edition, states that more than half of this class of adjectives end only in -ic, and a quarter of such formations end only in -ical. The rest may end with either suffix. It may be that the -ic forms are more common in American English and the -ical forms in British English, but different copyediting styles may also be a factor. Also, some idiomatic phrases may require one or the other of these suffixes.

Adverbs formed from these adjectives almost always end in -ically, such as musically. An exception is the adverb publicly, not publically.

Incidentally, in the term you mention --graphical user interface--"graphical" is used in the same sense as the word "graphic," although "graphic" has several other senses. To my knowledge, it's always been "graphical (not "graphic") user interface," being invented in the 1970s and popularized by the Mac in the 1980s.