regal

• regall (obsolete)

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹiːɡəl/

  • Audio (UK)

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• Rhymes: -iːɡəl

From Middle English regal, from Old French regal (“regal, royal”), from Latin rēgālis (“royal, kingly”), from rex (“king”); also regere (“to rule”). Doublet of royal (“belonging to a monarch”) and real (“unit of currency”). Cognate with Spanish real.

regal (comparative more regal, superlative most regal)

1. Of or relating to royalty.

   regal authority

   the regal title

   • 1649, J[ohn] Milton, ΕΙΚΟΝΟΚΛΆΣΤΗΣ [Eikonoklástēs] […], London: […] Matthew Simmons, […], OCLC 1044608640:

     He made a scorn of his regal oath.

2. Befitting a king, queen, emperor, or empress.
   • 2013 August 10, Lexington, “Keeping the mighty honest”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:

     The [Washington] Post's proprietor through those turbulent [Watergate] days, Katharine Graham, held a double place in Washington’s hierarchy: at once regal Georgetown hostess and scrappy newshound, ready to hold the establishment to account.

   • 2018 July 14, Lineker, Gary, Twitter‎, retrieved 2018-07-15:

     Terrific movement from The Queen here. Gets behind the defender, goes one way then cuts back inside. Regal attacking play.

   • 2022 December 10, Harry Taylor, “Liz Truss and I ‘got carried away’ writing mini-budget, admits Kwasi Kwarteng”, in The Guardian‎:

     Kwarteng said he had urged Truss to “slow down” over reforms, but a cabinet minister told the FT that she felt “invincible, almost regal”.

3. Befitting a king, or emperor.
   • c. 1898, Truth, column 2:

     The children to whom I acted as cicerone almost screamed with glee as they saw the four-and-twenty blackbirds emerging from the pie-crust in front of the astonished King; and when the climax of the inconsequential story was reached, by way of the regal counting house and the “reginal” parlour, and a blackbird (presumably one of the four-and-twenty that had been temporarily immured in the pie) was seen about to revenge himself on the innocent nose of the guiltless laundry-maid, a veritable climax of enthusiasm was reached.

   • c. 1947, Hobbies, page 27, column 1:

     The crown seals, a regal crown and a reginal crown are unengraved, but from the motif I judge they symbolize King William III of England and Queen Mary, (see 1688, English History) who formerly ruled Holland as Prince William, Consort, and Queen Mary — The House of Orange.

   • 1973, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, page 78, column 2:

     In any case, the discrepancy might be explained by the fact that the 9th pylon has not yet disgorged all it blocks; it is in the talatat from this pylon that the masonry of the essentially regal (as opposed to reginal) temples Tni-mnw and Rwd-mnw predominate.

• reginal

• regime
• regimen

• kingly
• royal
• splendid
• stately

From Middle French régale, possibly from Old French regol (“a gutter, channel”).

regal (plural regals)

1. (music) A small, portable organ whose sound is produced by beating reeds without amplifying resonators. Its tone is keen and rich in harmonics. The regal was common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; today it has been revived for the performance of music from those times.
2. An organ stop of the reed family, furnished with a normal beating reed, but whose resonator is a fraction of its natural length. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries these stops took a multitude of forms. Today only one survives that is of universal currency, the so-called Vox Humana.

• Agler, Alger, Elgar, Large, Ragle, ergal, glare, lager, large

• (Balearic, Central) IPA^(key): /rəˈɡal/
• (Valencian) IPA^(key): /reˈɡal/

• Audio

  (file)

regal m (plural regals)

1. present; gift

• regalar

Borrowed from Latin rēgālem. Doublet of roial, which was inherited.

• IPA^(key): /reˈɡal/

regal m (oblique and nominative feminine singular regale)

1. regal

• Middle French: regal
• → Middle English: regal
  • English: regal

Borrowed from Latin rēgālis.

• IPA^(key): /reˈɡal/

regal m or n (feminine singular regală, masculine plural regali, feminine and neuter plural regale)

1. royal
2. regal

• regesc

• neregal
• neregesc

• rege

Borrowed from French régal.

regal n (plural regale)

1. feast
2. banquet